Arlene Phillips slams Rachel Reeves's plan to cut winter fuel payments

Dame Arlene Phillips has criticised Rachel Reeves’s plan to cut winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, saying older people ‘need that support’.

The top choreographer and former judge on BBC show Strictly Come Dancing said there must be a way the government can scrap the widely criticised measure.

She told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I’m absolutely shocked. I still have no understanding as to why this has to be blanket. I cannot understand why you have to apply because of income or lack of it because on a pension you can’t afford to eat and live and do all the things that you require as well as heat your house, so I have no understanding why that could not have been done.

‘There must be a way. Most people aren’t working at my age. There are people who have so little money and need that support.’

Speaking at the National Cat Awards in London, the TV star, 81, whose partner is Angus Ion, said her own mother-in-law will be affected by the allowance being taken away.

‘My partner‘s mother who was 96 on Monday she is old school, she collects the rainwater - everything she does is what she did during the war. ‘She never puts her heating on but if she simply lived off her pension, she wouldn’t be able to do more than exist and she’s so frugal.’

Reeves is under increasing pressure to stop her cuts after being handed a £10billion budget boost by the Bank of England (BoE).

The decision to scrap winter fuel payments for all but the poorest pensioners would save an estimated £1.4billion.

Last week, the Prime Minister reiterated that ‘tough decisions’ had to be taken to stabilise the economy and boost growth.

‘The reason we are taking these difficult decisions is to stabilise the economy. That’s the purpose behind it’, Sir Keir Starmer told ITV.

‘We’ve had a £22billion black hole left by the last government. I can’t walk past that problem. We’ve got to take tough decisions to deal with it.’