Letters: Lucy Letby and the statistics myth

Pensioners at risk

Sir: Douglas Murray wonders what would have happened if a Conservative chancellor had announced the removal of the winter fuel payment (‘Labour’s age of miracles’, 31 August) and speculates about the reaction. No such speculation is needed: the Conservative manifesto of 2017 stated that it would means test this benefit, as Labour is now doing.

The Labour party’s reaction was to publish research stating that up to 4,000 pensioners’ lives would be at risk and add that ‘pensioners in our country will struggle to heat their homes’ (the then shadow chancellor John McDonnell, as widely quoted in the press). No journalist has yet put this to the government. Does the government agree with its party’s research then, and if not, how is it different now? Will pensioners struggle to heat their homes?

Similarly, the Conservative 2017 manifesto pledge to change social care arrangements was howled down as a ‘dementia tax’. The Labour proposal in the same fiscal statement as the one cutting the winter fuel payment did something similar.