The figures for excess winter deaths are broadly static, thats true. But the bold figures do not tell the whole story.
How many would have died had the WFA not been introduced? How many more pensioners are now actually in fuel poverty due to the exorbitant rise in energy costs since the 90s? How much more would it have cost the NHS to treat elderly with conditions exacerbated by the cold as a consequence of being less able or more afraid to use their heating with the exponential rise in energy costs? Was each year exactly the same length of winter, exactly the same temperatures, exactly the same privations?
You argue as if you know the cost of everything, Gromit, but the value of nothing.
A civilised society looks after the weak and the halt and the lame, and we should certainly be taking care of those who have paid into the system as the vast majority have.
And it is, in national spending terms, a trivial cost to the national coffers - around 0.3% of the national expenditure. Despite your dismissal of its introduction as an electoral "bribe", it was a welcome measure, eminently affordable,something that Labour can be justly proud of, and probably more valuable now than it was when it was introduced.
Have you met many pensioners, Gromit? The idea that pensioners would be bribed into switching their political allegiance with a bung of a couple of hundred pounds a year is laughable.
You can tinker around the edges of it if you want - increasing the age at which the payment is made ( since the overwhelming majority of excess winter deaths occur in those over 75), or make it a taxable benefit, so the best off 15% of pensioners effectively pay it back, but it needs to remain.
If you really really want to save the country money - why not look at programmes far more costly, far less necessary and socially useful?
You seem obsessed with wishing to penalise those elderly that are vulnerable, and for the life of me I cannot see why.....