My elderly patients tell me everything I need to know about winter fuel

For those of us working in the NHS, worries about winter start earlier every year. 

I’m a consultant who specialises in respiratory illnesses, and as the weather starts to get worse, I’m reminded of Jane, a patient in her 70s, living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and numerous other health problems who was admitted twice in a matter of weeks last winter. 

She was so scared by her energy bills that she had rationed her heating to an hour a day in one room of her poorly insulated, draughty home.

It wasn’t enough. The cold left her vulnerable to infection and fighting for every breath. 

She didn’t know how to ask for help or where to turn to, so she ended up where so many do: In an NHS bed on my ward. 

Doctors like me and other NHS workers are confronted with the harsh realities of chronic illness and poverty on a daily basis, but in the last few years this has reached a crisis point. 

Patients like Jane are taking extreme measures to try to save money. Last winter, some of my patients literally rationed their oxygen because they couldn’t afford the electricity to run their concentrators and had inadequate support to try and claim back the costs. 

Many of these patients end up sick and in hospital.

The new Labour government cannot be unaware of these awful consequences of the energy crisis, and yet it has made the decision to withdraw winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners.

It’s doing so without prior consultation or impact assessment, and without time to set up alternative support for pensioners this winter. As someone on the frontline, trust me when I tell you this move is going to make a terrible situation even worse.

Almost five million pensioners will suffer this winter, partially as a result of these cuts – those hit hardest will be people whose incomes are just above the limit for pensioner credit.

Not only is this morally indefensible, it also doesn’t make any financial sense. Ensuring Jane was able to heat her home would be much more cost effective than footing the bill for two hospital admissions.

The NHS in England currently spends at least £1.4billion managing conditions related to poor housing. 

Tomorrow, MPs have the opportunity to vote against the proposed means testing of the lifeline winter fuel payment, which has already been publicly criticised by some MPs from all parties.

As Dame Harriet Baldwin, former Conservative minister stated, the government has made a ‘chilling political choice to balance the books of this country on the very frailest shoulders’ by means-testing the winter fuel payment. 

I’ve seen firsthand just how frail those shoulders are – MPs must vote against this misguided and potentially life-threatening plan. 

We are in a housing crisis, with rising rents, unaccountable landlords and poorly-insulated homes. Too many people are forced to live in cold, damp, inefficient houses not fit for habitation. For every £3 we spend on heating, £1 is wasted on heat that leaks out of our homes.

It’s therefore unsurprising, but still heartbreaking, that in the winter of 2022/23 alone there were close to 5,000 excess deaths because of cold houses. 

We are failing the people I care for with chronic lung diseases such as COPD and lung cancer. 

In the peak of the cost of living crisis in 2022, I watched my patients’ health deteriorate due to extreme stress over how they would fund the basics of life: Energy, heat, food and medicines.

We can treat respiratory illnesses, but my treatments don’t work when patients go straight back to cold homes. Inadequately heated homes are dangerous, and we NHS workers try to pick up the pieces of our broken energy system.

I am regularly stunned by the photographs patients’ show me of their homes, covered in black mould, walls dripping with condensation and leaks. 

I now routinely write letters on behalf of patients explaining to landlords the health impacts of damp and mould and their statutory responsibilities to address these issues with urgency.

With a new Labour government we have an opportunity to step back from the brink of a public health crisis. 

We desperately need support for households this winter – and we need political commitment to invest in the health of the nation.

MPs can vote on Tuesday to keep this support going.

And then they must have the courage to make transformative change: New minimum energy efficiency requirements need to be coupled with strengthened rights for renters to prevent increasing housing prices and evictions.

Time is ticking as winter approaches. I know that Jane, and many other people across the country, will be worrying about how they can make their income stretch to cover food, medicines, and energy. 

I fear we will see many, many unnecessary admissions and deaths again this winter. 

I hope those in Westminster act with the urgency required to prove me wrong.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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