A LETTER came today from the Winter Fuel Payment Centre.
Well, not quite from the Winter Fuel Payment Centre, because the letter was mailed from Belfast. The Winter etc etc is to be found at Mail Handling Site A in Wolverhampton, which on closer inspection looks like an industrial estate outside Kidderminster.
Right at the top it tells me I’m going to get £200. Hooray!
Just to make sure I have understood this important message, there is a paragraph in bold underneath to assure me I can get the news in braille (quick question: if I was blind, how I would be able to read that I could get the letter in braille?), sign language, a hearing loop, translations, large print, audio or an unspecified ‘something else’. Two phone numbers are provided to help me secure any of these services.
Jolly good. Reading on, they know all about my bank account, and I should get my money before Christmas. If it hasn’t come by January 28, hit the phone, not forgetting to have your national insurance number to hand.
There’s a bit about how I’m getting paid because I was born on or before 21 September 1959, and a bit more about how they have a website to tell me what else I can get ‘to help with the cost of living’.
Over the page, another bold heading: What happens next?
This, naturally, is the bad news. Should my income be over £35,000, the taxman will take the £200 back. Just in case I have any worries, it goes on at length about how to check what my income is and how HMRC, bless them, will grab it. If I’m on Self Assessment, though, I’ll have to remember to declare the £200 on the form. Doesn’t say what happens to me if I forget.
Then comes lots more about something called a Mandatory Reconsideration Notice, appeals to tribunals, and a warning to tell the Department for Work and Pensions if my circumstances change. Seemingly if I have been overpaid on my Winter Fuel Payment, I will have to pay it back.
And there’s also a paragraph about ‘treating people fairly’ which explains how committed the DWP are to the Equality Act 2010.
|’ve never been that good at sums. But let’s try to run a few numbers to work out what all this guff really means.
There are roughly 13million people over 65 in the UK. Around a quarter of them are on incomes of more than £35,000. So, at a very low estimate, at least two million people in England and Wales will be getting a nice letter telling them they are better off by a couple of hundred quid, with another bit telling them that, sadly, the taxman will confiscate the money shortly after they get it.
Let’s leave aside the fact that many of these two million better-off pensioners will regard £200 as possibly enough to buy Sunday lunch at their neighbourhood gastropub. Let’s try to guess how many civil servants it took and will take to prepare the meaningless letter in Wolverhampton and post it in Belfast to two million people who don’t want or need to know; provide the braille, translations and so on; man the phones; attend the computers that did all the calculations; respond to complaints and produce a Mandatory Reconsideration Notice; run the complaints tribunals; check on changes in circumstance and their implications; and monitor and enforce adherence to the Equality Act.
Don’t forget to add in all the extra hours of work by HMRC staff to take back the money their DWP colleagues in Wolverhampton have just paid out, including checking the Self Assessment forms that many of those richer pensioners will have painstakingly filled in, or sometimes not.
The easiest way to work this out is to take the number you first thought of and quadruple it. As Flanders and Swann noted, it all makes work for the working man to do.
In money terms, think of salaries, gold-plated pensions, allowances, redundancy pay-offs, compensation for discrimination victims. Think offices; computer centres; terminals, laptops, screens and phones; mobile phones; desks and chairs; office cleaners; window cleaners; maintenance staff; payroll staff; receptionists and secretaries; security staff; canteens; car parks; perhaps subsidised electric cars; heating in winter and aircon in summer.
Then think what a ginormous mess our masters in Tory and Labour parties and Whitehall have made of the supposedly simple idea of a winter fuel payment.
And if Nigel or Kemi win the next election, and start complaining there is no room for cuts, I can show them a letter to point the way.
