• MARTIN Plaut (Let’s see what the Reeves budget brings, October 3) is lucky not to need a winter fuel payment this year.

According to Age Concern, two million British pensioners will struggle to pay their energy bills and may have to choose between keeping warm and eating properly.

So the government needs to cut benefits to poor people because the Tories left a £22billion hole in the Treasury?

The idea of raising extra revenue by taxing Britain’s 177 billionaires, five of whom could fill the hole single-handedly, doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.

Or maybe it has but, since several of them now bankroll the Labour Party, pensioners look like an easy target. The billionaires are getting a free ride in return.

Plaut’s other recommendation for endless economic growth is not only massively unjust but seriously dangerous. The rich world’s insatiable appetite for “stuff”, much of which we don’t need, is causing accelerating changes in the environment that threatens our very existence on this planet.

Growth is the last thing we need. What we do need is redistribution, and masses of it.

PETER ROBBINS, NW5