"Today marks a big shift away from that world of Conservative politics. On pensioner benefits the manifesto not only proposes means testing Winter Fuel Payments, but doing so aggressively to raise significant sums. In 2015 Labour symbolically called for the payments to be withdrawn from the richest pensioners with incomes of over £43,000, raising just £100 million. Theresa May is proposing to go much further, restricting the payments to “the least well-off pensioners”. The manifesto avoids spelling out what this means, but if done within the current system of pensioner support that looks set to restrict the payments to the very poorest 2 million pensioners entitled to pensions credit, saving in the region of £1.7 billion by taking the benefit away from 10 million pensioners."
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