Conservative MPs have called on the Government to “think again” about means-testing the winter fuel payment.

Tories gathered in Westminster on Tuesday morning, ahead of handing in a petition to the Treasury, a day before Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers her first Budget.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride told the PA news agency that the petition has collected “over a quarter of a million signatures”.

Mr Stride said they are “calling upon the Government to think again about means-testing the winter fuel payment”.

He said “many” pensioners are going to “really, really struggle”, adding: “This Government chose to give well above inflationary pay rises to trade union paymasters when it came to wage settlements and chose to take this money away from some of the most vulnerable people in the country. We don’t believe that’s right.”

The Government said after taking office that it needed to fill a £22 billion “black hole” in the public finances.

Ms Reeves is said to have since identified a far larger £40 billion funding gap which she will seek to plug to protect key departments from real-terms cuts and put the economy on a firmer footing.

Mr Stride said Labour’s claims of the black hole are a “smoke screen”, as a raft of tax increases is expected in Wednesday’s fiscal statement.

Discovery of the “black hole” in the weeks following July’s election led to Ms Reeves making a series of what she called “difficult decisions” to close the gap, including the move to means-test winter fuel payments.

Mr Stride said: “This £22 billion black hole is simply a smoke screen to try and disguise the fact that – whereas in the general election the Government said we shouldn’t expect lots of tax increases – now the general election is over, they knew all along that with their spending plans they were going to have to raise taxes quite dramatically.”

He added: “This is a smoke stream to try and disguise that.”

In late July Ms Reeves announced the payment would become means-tested, a change in policy that was expected to reduce the number of pensioners in receipt of the benefit by 10 million.

She told the Commons at the time that she was “making the difficult decision that those not in receipt of Pension Credit or certain other means-tested benefits will no longer receive the winter fuel payment from this year onwards”.

Meanwhile, government figures show the number of approved claims for Pension Credit decreased in the five weeks following the Government’s announcement that the payment would be means-tested.

Data obtained from the Department for Work and Pensions through a Freedom of Information request shows that 11,310 claims for Pension Credit were approved in the five weeks leading up to July 29 2024, whereas 10,938 claims were approved in the five weeks after that date.