NC: The earnings link should be restored
Grace, the earnings link needs to be restored. It needs to be restored immediately, there is no doubt about that. It shouldn't have been broken in the first place, you have lost out for many years, it needs to be restored. Something which I'm sure you're familiar with, which is there are so many other costs which the elderly have to confront, which really do make it extremely difficult to make ends meet. Fuel costs. We have just had a very cold winter for example, it's a very good example. I got a letter a few months ago from an elderly couple, who said to me they now found it so difficult to heat their homes on cold winter days, that on those cold winter days, they get into a bus in their town and travel around the bus just to stay warm. That is wrong. It is wrong that energy companies charge you more for the first bits of energy that you use in your home than the later bits. That means someone who's heating a great big five-storey mansion is paying cheaper, paying less for their energy than someone who's just heating a one bedroom flat. That needs to change too, so we can give you the dignity you deserve.
There are two-and-a-half million pensioners in poverty, so after 13 years and all Labour's promises about giving a fair deal to pensioners, two-and-a-half million pensioners in poverty. That's how bad it is. I think we need to, therefore, make sure that we use what little money we've got, money is tight at the moment, wisely. And what we are saying is this. The winter fuel payments, the age of eligibility is going to rise, this is a decision which Gordon Brown's Government has already taken, from 60 to 65 in the coming years. We're saying if you bring that forward you could use the money to actually extend the winter fuel payments to people who are terminally ill and disabled, who at the moment don't get access to the winter fuel payments. I think that is fair. One final thing. We talked about social care, we talked about this last week, I really cannot stress enough, I think that's one issue where we just have got to put people before politics for once. This is something which is such a big issue, we need to agree on a common approach, that is the only way to provide good social care.