Letter to David Smith MP - 30th July 2024

This is a letter I sent to my MP, David Smith (Labour) which remains unanswered 6 months later. Is it any wonder we lose faith in our politicians?

David Smith MP. House of Commons. LONDON SW1A 0AA

30th July 2024

Dear Mr Smith

I am writing to you in your capacity as the Labour MP for North Northumberland, having been elected less than one month from the date of this letter, I had hoped for better from a Labour Government but I am entirely unsurprised at the direction of travel.

I am utterly appalled that one of the first actions of The Government is to remove the longstanding (introduced by Labour) winter fuel payment (WFP) of £300 to pensioners, adversely affecting approximately ten million people. This has been promoted as being “means tested” when it is not, it is a blanket cut. The means of individuals to manage without it has not been tested at all.

My wife and I have both retired after a lifetime of work in the NHS, we have never claimed benefits and the WFP was our sole “benefit”. We paid into the system (Income Tax and NI) throughout our working lives in the belief that what we were paying into would deliver certain anticipated benefits and services. My wife, also a cancer survivor, was also hugely impacted by the WASPI scandal which cost her years of State Pension payments when her pension was delayed without warning.

I also note the scrapping, by the new Labour Government, of the proposed Care Costs Cap (CCC), once again leaving millions facing an uncertain future. This is a further early indication of the fact that politicians of all parties simply cannot be trusted and that what they say, or do not say, before an election is utterly meaningless.

I do not, I am sure, need to point out that neither the scrapping of the WFP or the CCC were mentioned by Labour, or you personally in your pre-election literature, prior to the election itself. This is as shocking as it is predictable, it will I am sure also be just the beginning.

By vastly reducing our use of heating and hot water my wife and I had managed to reduce our monthly energy standing order to just over £100 per month. This meant that the £300 WFP made a massive contribution to our fuel costs over the winter months of December, January and February. The Government, of which You are a part, has done this without prior warning and almost immediately after being voted into power, this is an utter betrayal.

Based on these early indicators it is our intention to sell our house and move into rented property which we will pay for from the sale of our house, as we believe that Your Government will continue with it’s tax raising and benefits cutting agenda. It is clear that those who have worked hard and been provident will be penalised to fund those who have been idle and feckless. Your Government would have been better advised to target the black economy where millions avoid paying tax and NI contributions whilst simultaneously creaming off benefits instead of taking the easy option of taking from older people.

Once we have sold our home we plan to spend what we can before we die, or become completely incapacitated, at least then we will have some pleasure from our decades of hard work rather than seeing anything we have swallowed up in care costs. If we run out of money Your Government can then pick up the bill, and foot the costs of our future dependence on benefits.

Yours sincerely,