Energy secretary says government is ‘putting forward the money’ for new nuclear power station as Greens say money better spent on green energy
Ed Miliband was on radio and TV this morning to talk about nuclear energy, but he spent much of the time in interviews talking about winter fuel payments (WFPs). In particular, he was asked if the government would apologise for cutting WFPs last year, given that it has now decided to restore them for most pensioners.
No, was the answer. Miliband told Times Radio:
We’re not going to apologise for the actions we took to stabilise the economy. That’s what happened last year. The chancellor came into office, saw a massive black hole in the nation’s finances. She took a whole series of measures.
Now, what’s happened since then is two things. One, we have stabilised the public finances and secondly, we’ve listened to people. Now, we haven’t changed the principle that the winter fuel allowance should be means tested but we have listened to people on the threshold of how high the threshold should be for qualification. Personally, I think it’s the right thing that the chancellor has done.
