GREEN Party leader Natalie Bennett has criticised the suggestion today by the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls that Labour if it wins the 2015 election would means test the winter fuel allowance.
Natalie said: "Universal benefits have great value in ensuring social unity - a sense that everyone benefits from the welfare state, directly as well as indirectly. The payments cost about 2% of the welfare budget - destroying this principle for a small cost saving is taking a very dangerous path."
Natalie added: "Additionally, the practical effect of introducing the administrative measures necessary to implement the cut would heavily cut into savings. And we know that as with the complex pension credit system, many who should be receiving payments fail to get them when they are means tested.
"What we need are simple, clear universal benefits - at best the Green Party policy of a citizen's or basic income - with the money being recovered from the wealthy through fair, transparent taxes."
Mr Balls also refused today to say that Labour if in power would reverse the Tory/Lib Dem government's cuts to child benefit for the wealthy.
Natalie said: "This is disturbing. It was Labour women MPs who fought hard for this benefit after the Second World War, in recognition of the fact that household income is not always equally, or at all, available to all members of the household, and that raising a child deserves special state recognition. To throw away this principle is a fundamental betrayal of the principles on which the Labour Party was founded."
She added that the overall tone of Mr Ball's speech was also cause for concern.
"Just as the consensus is growing that government austerity is entirely the wrong direction, as concluded by the International Monetary Fund, not usually known as a champion of government spending, Mr Balls appears to be suggesting that a future Labour government would follow George Osborne's cleared failed economic prescription.
"We need to invest in the future, to make our economy and society fit for our low-carbon future, which means spending money not just on essential infrastructure such as home insulation and public transport, but maintaining and improving benefit levels to tackle poverty, reduce inequality and more fairly share the wealth of our society."