Another brilliant scheme

From The Metro:

Winter fuel payments for pensioners are an "unsustainable" response to fuel poverty and should be reconsidered, a report has said.

The Government's £2.7 billion-a-year budget for winter fuel payments might be better spent on lagging, insulating, reglazing and modernising the homes of pensioners who cannot afford to heat them properly, suggested the local government spending watchdog.

The Audit Commission said only 12% of people receiving the payments - worth up to £400 a year - are classed as being in fuel poverty. And it said that the payments do nothing to encourage energy efficiency and reduce the CO2 emissions blamed for global warming.

That appears to be half a step in the right direction, but as I said a day or two ago:

"If you increase taxes on [domestic fuel]... then home insulation becomes more attractive anyway by comparison, and if they scrapped all this loony 'extra investment in renewables' as well, then there'd be plenty of extra money for cutting vehicle excise duty, increasing the tax-free personal allowance or old age pensions so that the average user is no worse off..."

At present, the Winter Fuel Voucher is just extra State Pension. It's a bit of a gimmick (which not just add £4 to the weekly basic state pension and have done with it?) but hey. But if they stop paying it, and spend the money on insulating pensioners' homes, who would benefit more? A granny in an ex-council flat, which has neither cellar nor loft-space to be insulated; or another granny living in a three-bed semi?

If you accept MMGW as a given, then the Audit Commission's suggestion seems sensible. But if you are like me, and you neither believe in MMGW nor do you believe in subsidies (whether to the home-insulation industry or to owners of larger homes), the Winter Fuel Vouchers actually make far more sense.