You won’t find me mounting the barricades in defence of the winter fuel payment, though I’ll miss the pleasant surprise when it landed in my bank account sometime before Christmas. I do, though, have a bit of a bone to pick with those well-heeled and often still lucratively-employed pensioners who dusted off their metaphorical loud-hailers (in the form of letters to newspapers and social media posts) every autumn to protest that they didn’t need it, that it was a waste of taxpayers’ money, and that they a) gave it to charity, b) spent it on Christmas presents or c) ordered another case of good wine.
Ending the single occupier discount could cause more problems for the government than means-testing the winter fuel payment
These individuals may be more responsible than they know for the Labour government’s decision to abolish the payment. This won’t just affect the more than comfortably-off like themselves, but the vast majority of the ten million or so who used to receive it, including those just above the threshold for other help. Their interventions reinforced the cliche that your average pensioner is a feather-bedded ‘boomer’ sponging off ‘hard-pressed’ working-age families.
To be sure, there were many who, strictly speaking, didn’t need the winter fuel payment. But universality reduced administrative costs and meant that no one had to plead for it, claim special need, or otherwise put themselves forward, which is why – along with the obligatory form-filling – so many miss out on pension credit. That is why I regret that, barring an unlikely rethink, the universal winter fuel payment is dead and gone – along, in time perhaps, with some elderly people of a proud and self-reliant disposition who decide not to risk using their heating.
But, as I say, I won’t be on the barricades for the winter fuel payment. There is one change being floated, however, which could see me deploying not just all the metaphorical loud-hailers at my disposal, but asking to borrow someone else’s real megaphone for some serious business in Parliament Square. This is the suggestion, not denied by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, that the government could bow to pressure from impecunious local councils and allow them to discontinue the single occupier discount for council tax. In objecting, I would be motivated at least as much by a basic sense of fairness as by parsimony (though paying less council tax is always welcome, too).
The sole occupier discount reduces council tax by 25 per cent for households with just one adult. This still means that single occupiers are paying way over the odds. Given that full council tax is payable by two adults living in one house or flat, and in many properties several more, 25 per cent is at the mean end of the spectrum – 50 per cent would be more like it. But there is no point in jeopardising the principle by demanding too much, so let’s stick with the 25 per cent.
Abolish that, though, and Labour – along with its insolvent proxies in local government – could find itself with a full-scale revolt on its hands. A revolt, what is more, that won’t be halted by clapping us all in jail, as per the ‘tiny minority of far-right thugs’ who are currently being fast-tracked through the courts. We won’t be rioting (probably), but we could use our vote to evict local councils, or maybe take them to court on grounds of elementary justice. After all, if the women of Next can win an equal pay claim on the basis of equivalent work, then we who live expensively alone could surely mount a successful challenge on grounds of proportionality.
A single existence is considerably more expensive, as I soon noted as a widow after happy decades of coupledom. The old adage that two live as cheaply as one is wrong, but shared expenses make it a lot cheaper than living alone. From travel of all kinds to supermarket food, where bigger equals cheaper – to the detriment of the nation’s health – there is a singles penalty, and it is very hard to escape. You can maybe zone the heating in your home to reduce usage, but you can do that as a family, too. And you can’t keep the place cooler or the water less hot just because you are the sole user. A water meter might cut your bills, but that isn’t available to everyone.
Ending the single occupier discount could cause more problems for the government than means-testing the winter fuel payment. This is because the council tax discount as it currently works applies not just to older people, but to all those who occupy a home alone. And so it should, given our inevitably lower demand on council services. We produce far less rubbish for collection than families. Most of us don’t have children who use the schools or other children’s services. There is just one of us to use the libraries and other council services, compared with two or more in many other homes. Let me say it again, a 25 per cent discount is still ripping us off.
Along with peaceful protests and court challenges, however, there is another response that abolition of the council tax discount could provoke. It is one that most Labour councils, if not all Labour voters would find deeply uncomfortable. It could spur support for revisiting Margaret Thatcher’s doomed community charge, otherwise known as the poll tax.
The principle was that council tax should be levied according to the number of people in a household, much like state income tax does in the United States. Its critics saw the switch from a property-based tax as the distillation of free-market Thatcherism. But the principle surely has merit: that the amount you pay to the local council for its services should be in proportion to the services you use. It is not an income tax, which is redistributive. It is a contribution to local services.
A change of government tends to revive calls for a reform of the outdated council tax system, which is based on the rentable value of the property way back when, and the same is true this time around. But any mooted abolition of the single occupier discount could make a new poll tax the least bad option for many, especially as the number of single occupier households has been rising. Opposition would also be broader than with the winter fuel payment, as those affected would include younger people and single parents, as well as lone pensioners.
The aborted introduction of the poll tax is now widely seen as a symptom and a cause of Thatcher’s political demise. It prompted protests on the streets and a mass refusal to pay. Could an end to the discount for sole occupiers do the same for this Labour government?
