Universal Pensioner Benefits: Pre-Budget Update
Editor's note: Please see the recent update at the end of this text for analysis of the Winter Fuel reversal announcement in June 2025, and its implications for the future of universal pensioner benefits.....You may also be interested in a more recent update on the recent rumours that Reeves may introduce means testing for the State Pension itself in this November's budget.... ----------------------------- Now that the dust has well and truly settled after Reeves’ so-called ‘Halloween Nightmare’ budget in October 2024, and the consequences have fully fitered through to the economy at large, let’s take a look at what actually happened to pensioner benefits…and what we might expect to happen in future. We all know about the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment for the majority of pensioners last summer – you would have had to have been living on Mars for the last year not to. Although he obviously thinks it's 'done and dusted', Starmer is not yet out of the woods o...