Labour backbenchers have issued a plea to Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to spare poorer pensioners from losing winter fuel payments.

A Commons motion backed by 23 Labour MPs, as well as three who were elected as Labour candidates but now sitting as independents, suggests benefit rules could be changed so support is available to pensioners currently deemed too wealthy to need it.

Only pensioners eligible for benefits such as Pension Credit will continue to receive winter fuel allowances of up to £300 to keep homes warm this winter, under the new means-testing policy announced by the Chancellor. In most cases this means single people with an income above £11,344 or couples with a joint income above £17,313 will lose the money.

But analysis from Age UK shows that 82 percent of pensioners living below or just above the poverty line are set to lose their Winter Fuel Payment as a result.

Those signing the warning that “the current threshold of pension support to open the gate way of winter fuel allowance is too low” include John Trickett, who was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Gordon Brown when Mr Brown was Prime Minister.

The MPs do not specify what the new threshold should be but any increase would add significantly to the current cost of Pension Credit, which is £5.4 billion. However creating a separate means-test specifically for winter fuel payments, rather than using the existing Pension Credit threshold, would also be hugely expensive.

Dennis Reed, Director of campaigning group Silver Voices, said: “Labour MPs are casting around trying to find ways out of the political embarrassment that the party is facing

“If the Pension Credit threshold was raised significantly so it took in the two to three million older people who are going to immediately fall into poverty as a result of this decision then that is something we would welcome, but it won’t happen because the cost to the treasury would be far more than the savings from this petty measure.”

Silver Voices is calling on the Government to delay the change for a year and then to stop payments only for people paying the higher rate of income tax, with incomes of £50,271 or above.

Caroline Abrahams CBE, Charity Director at Age UK said: “We hear from lots of people who have an income slightly too high to qualify for them for Pension Credit, meaning that from this winter they’ll be ineligible for the Winter Fuel Payment, even though they may already be struggling to make ends meet.

“This group are far from wealthy, and many rely on the extra money to keep the heating on, so it’s imperative that the Government explores every avenue to ensure that no-one who really needs the money is left struggling this winter.”

Heidi Karjalainen, Senior Research Economist at think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “A higher threshold does not remove the issue of low take up.”