Bridget Phillipson

speaker

367 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 10 Jul

Bridget Phillipson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The News Agents · Bridget Phillipson: "Spiteful class warrior" and proud · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

And the first one I did after the general election was kind of the very end of July.

So after the winter fuel allowance announcement and my God, it was it was an angry meeting.

And it was the symbolism, but it was also people said, look, we voted Labour and we didn't vote for this.

We didn't expect this.

And we thought you would behave in a way that they just didn't think it was fair.

Well, we got there.

The problem was the policy.

We got there with the right policy, which is that the wealthiest pensioners know they shouldn't be getting it.

But actually, the way in which it was set, the limit actually captured a lot of people, including in my constituency, who are not affluent, not wealthy people.

but have maybe got a little by way of savings or have got a small widow's pension, whatever it might be, and therefore were set to lose their winter fuel allowance.

The trouble was, we then got to a better position on the policy, but we didn't actually explain that we changed it.

So I still to this day have people saying to me, you took away my winter fuel allowance, even though they've had it.

On the basis of what they've told me, they have almost certainly got it back.

So it's those kinds of things.

And I think the trouble is,

It has crowded out some amazing achievements.

You know, you look at the Employment Rights Act, the Renters' Rights Act, massive upgrades in terms of rights for working people, where they live, how they live their lives, rights in the workplace, greater protections.

And that's alongside all of the things I'm obviously personally proud of that we've done in education both.

some of the practical changes in the short term that will make a big difference, whether that's the huge expansion in childcare, free school meals in September, new free breakfast clubs, but also being willing to grapple with and confront some of the longstanding challenges that previous governments had run away from.

You know, take SEND reform, for example.

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