A pensioner body has urged the government to reverse scrapping the £300 Winter Fuel Payment.

The National Pensioners Convention told the Chancellor today her decision means many older people ‘may not survive to see the spring’.

Jan Shortt, the general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), warned older people may “not survive to see the spring or any other season” after the payments are cut.

Shortt said in her letter to the chancellor: “Our members are angered and concerned about your plan to remove the winter fuel payment from older people who do not receive pension credit.

“There are already 2 million older people in poverty across the UK. For them, this means living in damp, cold homes, washing in cold water and not using the cooker, all to save money. At least a further 1 million older people live with precarious finances and face growing financial insecurity.”

She went on: “Not everyone has a full state pension and not everyone has an occupational pension to fall back on.

"Those just above the pension credit threshold are penalised and struggle on a daily basis with a static income deemed by the government to be sufficient to live on."

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The NPC called on the government to “step away from this ill-advised strategy immediately”. The reported savings of about £1.5bn a year seemed “relatively poor compared to the mass misery that will be caused this winter”, Shortt said.

She added:“Evidence shows that cutting the income of older people struggling to make ends meet inevitably puts a further burden on NHS and care services as more are unable to heat their homes and buy nutritious food.”

The chancellor said during the election campaign that she would inherit the biggest mess since the Second World War but even after being elected, the mess was worse than imagined.