Stride: 'Public are outraged over cuts'

TORY leadership candidate Mel Stride says Labour are wrong if they think the winter fuel payments scandal will fade – as there is “genuine public outrage”.

- David Williamson

The former Work and Pensions Secretary also accused Sir Keir Starmer’s party of “massive hypocrisy” which will make them “eminently beatable” at the next general election.

Insisting the Conservatives would not have put the pensioners’ entitlement at risk if they had won in July, he predicts the country will see the “consequences of this fairly soon in the winter” with “more and more people in distress”.

Predicting many will face a dilemma over whether to heat their homes or eat, he said: “It’s exactly that choice for millions of elderly people who can’t change their economic circumstances.”

Turning his guns on Labour ministers, he went on: “I think there’s massive hypocrisy to have gone into a general election saying that they want to restore integrity to public life, be straight and transparent with people.

“To have said they had no plans to means-test the winter fuel payment and then to have done it so quickly beggars belief.”