Kemi Badenoch got tough with Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. Not tough enough, but at least she led on a decent issue: old folks in distress. She mentioned the Waspi women and then she changed tack, to wrong foot Sir Kier, and threw him a short but specific question. How many new applications for pension credit have been received since the winter fuel allowance was cut in the budget?
Kemi was better today but she lacks bite
Sir Keir didn’t know. So he evoked the black hole to get him out of trouble. ‘We had to put the finances back in order,’ he cried. Kemi gave Sir Keir the information he didn’t have. Pension credit is owed to 850,000 citizens who haven’t claimed it.
‘If they sign up that will cost £2.3 billion,’ she said, ‘wiping out the savings [the chancellor] claimed she would make.’
Kemi warned that ‘some may even die as a result of this cruel policy.’
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