Winter Fuel Allowance - Online e-Petition

[jamjar]

I will be 64 middle of next month, still working on a reasonable wage, well enough to allow me 2 or 3 trips to Fuerte each year and I have been getting the £200 in November each year and even though I dont really need it I am not going to offer it back, after all I have paid enough in over the years.

[woe10]

COLDEST JANUARY IN THE CANARIES SINCE 2006

The eastern islands (Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria) saw 15% less sunshine than they usually do in January,

http://www.islandconnections.eu/1000003/1000043/0/44651/daily-news-article.html

[IsThisForumStillGoingWow]

We've all signed it woe, we don't need convincing 

[admin]

From: https://www.gov.uk/winter-fuel-payment/eligibility

Winter Fuel Payment

3. Eligibility
You`ll qualify for Winter Fuel Payment if:

you were born on or before 5 July 1952 (for winter 2014 to 2015 - this date changes every year)
you`ll be living in the UK throughout the week of 15 to 21 September 2014
You may still be able to get the payment if you live in another European Economic Area (EEA) country or Switzerland and you have a genuine link with the UK.

When you won`t qualify
You won`t qualify if throughout the week of 15 to 21 September 2014 you:

are in prison
are in hospital getting free treatment for more than 52 weeks
need permission to enter the UK and don`t qualify for help from the Department for Work and Pensions
have lived in a care home for the previous 12 weeks or more and get Pension Credit, income-based Jobseeker`s Allowance or income-related Employment and Support Allowance

[admin]

From: http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/expat-money/11355524/MPs-fight-back-against-expat-winter-fuel-allowance-cuts.html

By Elizabeth Roberts
10:44AM GMT 20 Jan 2015

MPs fight back against expat winter fuel allowance cuts

British pensioners set to lose the benefit, worth up to £300, have won the backing of six MPs who hope to thwart the rule change

Britons abroad have signalled that they will not give up their winter fuel allowance without a fight â€" and now they have won backing from six Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs.

A statutory instrument (SI) laid before Parliament last month stopped payments to expats in countries where the average annual temperature is higher than the south west of England.

The move will affect pensioners in Spain, France, Greece, Portugal, Malta, Gibraltar and Cyprus from September.
An SI is a form of secondary legislation that enabled the rule change to proceed without Parliamentary debate.
However, Sir Roger Gale, a Tory MP who champions the rights of Britons abroad, hopes to put a rarely used parliamentary technique â€" known as a prayer â€" into action to stop the statutory change from being implemented.

The idea is that if enough MPs sign the prayer to register their opposition to the rule-change, the Government may decide that the matter merits a Parliamentary debate. He has already gained support from five other Members of Parliament.

The cost-cutting measures in respect of winter fuel allowances come after recent figures showed a rise in the number of expat pensioners claiming the allowance. The total paid out to them in 2013-14 was £22 million, a record amount.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has described the payments to expats in warmer countries as an "obscene waste of taxpayers' money”.
He told MailOnline last month: "Winter fuel payments exist to help Britain's pensioners keep themselves warm. It's absurd and offensive that taxpayers are funding these payments for people who have retired to the Mediterranean and enjoy warmer weather.”

The rule change will affect around 95,000 of the 139,000 expat pensioners who claim the allowance. Many have complained about losing their winter fuel allowance (WFA), saying the Department for Work and Pensions has failed to take into account the freezing temperatures they experience in winter. They protested that having paid taxes and national insurance contributions, they should not be stripped of the allowance, which is worth £300 per year to those over 80 and £200 to under 80s.

Roger Boaden, 74, a former election manager for Margaret Thatcher, has been campaigning on behalf of expats across Europe to keep the WFA in place. Mr Boaden, who lives in the Limousin region of France, discovered that the tropical administrative regions of French Guyana, Guadeloupe, La Reunion, and Martinique were included when the Government got the Met Office to carry out temperature tests for France. These tests were used as the justification to axe the WFA.

In an email to Mr Boaden, Sir Roger, the MP for North Thanet, explained how he hopes to halt the rule change.
“The statutory instrument was laid on Dec 10 and there are 40 days for Members to pray against it. Allowing for [the] Christmas [recess] that takes us to February 9 and we now need as many signatures of MPs â€" particularly Conservatives â€" to be added to the prayer as possible," he wrote.
Sir Roger urged those interested to write to their own UK Member of Parliament at their last UK address and ask them to sign the Early Day Motion 695 (parliament.uk/edm/2014-15/695).

“Interested parties should indicate the personal effect that the removal of WFA will have upon them," he advised.

“There is no guarantee that this will prove successful, that parliamentary time will be provided for a debate or that the Coalition will heed the outcome of any such debate if there is one but the cause is just and it is worth a try.

“For the record, my personal view is that WFA should be either scrapped completely or at the very least means-tested (it is daft that people in my position, for example, receive it) but as long as the law is as it is it must be applied even-handedly.”

So far, the Early Day Motion, tabled on Jan 15, has been signed by three Tory MPs in addition to Sir Roger. They are Sir Peter Bottomley, the MP for Worthing West, Peter Aldous, MP for Waveney and Robert Syms, who represents Poole. Two Lib Dems have also signed - Sir Nick Harvey, the MP for North Devon and John Leech, who represents Manchester Withington.

Sir Roger said he does not usually sign EDMS “which are widely and rightly regarded as ‘parliamentary graffiti`" but that for “wholly inexplicable reasons” this is the only device to get a prayer against a Statutory Instrument placed on the order paper.

"I have, accordingly and exceptionally therefore tabled an EDM," he told Telegraph Expat.

“There is a widespread and fallacious view that expat UK citizens are all stinking rich and sitting on yachts in Nice or Cannes drinking gin and tonic. Many are, in fact, living under harsh conditions, cold, unable to return to the UK and on the poverty line. To suggest otherwise and then to use French Caribbean territories to 'massage' the winter temperature figures is, frankly, offensive."

[IsThisForumStillGoingWow]

Well I've signed it 3 times now as I logged into hubby's email account and also from another email account I have. Can't do more than that really. 

[woe10]

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has described the payments to expats in warmer countries as an "obscene waste of taxpayers' money”.
"Winter fuel payments exist to help Britain's pensioners keep themselves warm. It's absurd and offensive that taxpayers are funding these payments for people who have retired to the Mediterranean and enjoy warmer weather.”

WHAT A PLONKER

It's been discovered that the tropical administrative regions of French Guyana, Guadeloupe, La Reunion, and Martinique, were included when the Government got the Met Office to carry out temperature tests for France. These tests were used as the justification to axe the WFA.

PLONKERS

Tonight in Majorca is  -1 degree celcius.

“There is a widespread and fallacious view that expat UK citizens are all stinking rich and sitting on yachts in Nice or Cannes drinking gin and tonic. Many are, in fact, living under harsh conditions, cold, unable to return to the UK and on the poverty line. To suggest otherwise and then to use French Caribbean territories to 'massage' the winter temperature figures is, frankly, offensive."

Countries where the average annual temperature is higher than the south west of England   
Which genius thought of that one.

[IsThisForumStillGoingWow]

Well we have the bag of salt in the porch (in case the path is iced up in the morning) the de-icer for the car windscreen is sitting on the hall table....hope you have all those laid out too woe ....  (or maybe a brush to brush the sand off your windscreen if it's been blowey) 

[woe10]

Yes, but I bet you're all cuddly and warm inside the house, with your double glazing and central heating 

The cold OUTSIDE doesn't bother me at all. The issue here is INSIDE our homes. Houses here are not exactly built to UK Standards, to withstand the cold weather, and retain the heat. 

Incidentally, I'm not short of £200, that doesn't bother me. There's a Principle at stake here.

HEALTH TOURISM. Foreign visitors and short-term migrants cost the NHS £2billion a year, an official report warns today.
The first comprehensive assessment of ‘health tourism` says the true cost to taxpayers is up to 100 times bigger than some estimates.

The Government should be more concerned about this. Not punishing people who have paid National  Insurance all their lives. It's just a Vote Grabbing ploy to make people in the UK think that ex-pats live a life of Riley 

[cbeal]

Obviously they don't live the life of Riley, some have evidently have a life of woe....

[IsThisForumStillGoingWow]

I've got one of these too Woe 

[Jock719]

Yawn. Pensioners moaning about being cold in the sun on Fuerteventura. Just like pensioners moaning about the weather in the UK...go to the nearest pub and spend all day round the heater with half a bitter...

[Ivemovedon]

You tell 'em woe.

If Katie Price with her gargantuan bank balance can get freebies and nobody asks for it back, that 200 quid should be safe in your pocket.

[woe10]

Go to the nearest pub and spend all day round the heater with half a bitter...

I've seen people like you in Bars in Caleta. Sit there all night with half of lager 

[Jock719]

Not me, I don't go to Caleta, can't get to the bar for Zimmer frames, can't hear the music for pensioners moaning about the cold....

[Ivemovedon]

I've heard a few excuses for not getting to the bar over the years. That ranks up there with the best of them.

[aph1]

lol! I'm with you Jock......the pensioners seem to keep warm by chasing the happy hours round town!

[aph1]

oh and keep the rest of us warm with all the hot air they produce moaning about their investments and pensions before wobbling home to eat their English sausages and cheese they bring over by the case load.....just saying it as it is!