WARRINGTON South Labour MP Sarah Hall shares her views in this week’s column.

This isn’t a decision I wanted to make, it isn’t a decision we expected to make, and it isn’t a decision we should have to make.

Unfortunately, after 14 years of chaos our country’s finances have been left in a shambles.

The previous Government are directly responsible, the Conservatives made a series of unfunded spending commitments leaving a £22 billion black hole for this Government to inherit. They ran out of money, covered it up and pretended like it hadn’t happened.

There are no easy options. If we did nothing, we put our country’s financial stability at risk, just like Liz Truss did, including the risk of higher debt, higher mortgages and higher costs for the future. We could not allow for a repeat of the reckless decisions taken by the Conservatives.

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of misinformation spread about winter fuel payments and the support that is available to pensioners. Let me be clear, we are not removing winter fuel payments entirely, they will still be available to those who need it most via pension credit.

I do however understand that this creates a threshold which some constituents fall outside of, meaning people who previously received the payments will no longer be eligible.

I will be hosting a series of specific pensioner advice surgeries over the coming weeks to ensure those who need support are getting everything they are entitled to.

Whether that’s pension credit, household support funding, energy vouchers, cold weather payments, warm home discount, energy-saving improvements or energy provider assistance funds.

I am committed to protecting the triple lock on pensions, shortly, the Government will announce a further increase to the state pension expected to be worth more than £400 this follows an increase earlier this year of £900.

In addition, the Government will prioritise support for vulnerable people through our new warm homes plan, which will support investment in insulation and low-carbon heating and upgrades for millions of homes over this Parliament, helping to drive bills down.

This has not been an easy decision for me to make. But, to deliver the public services we all rightly expect and deserve we must fix the foundations of our economy. There are no easy solutions and unfortunately there are many tough decisions.

Finally, I want to reassure those who are concerned with the changes. My team and I are on hand to support you. If you would like to arrange one of my pensioner advice surgery appointments, or you would like to arrange an appointment on behalf of a relative or friend you can get in touch via sarah.hall.mp@parliament.uk.