Nick Clegg: 'scarcity election' puts OAP benefits in play Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke, Conservative Cabinet ministers, this week suggested that the party could put changes in pensioner benefits in its election manifesto in 2015. Other Tory MPs say the benefits should be means-tested or taxed. The Coalition has admitted that the current squeeze on the public finances will continue into the next Parliament. Mr Clegg, speaking to reporters at Westminster, said that means all parties will fight the next election promising cuts in items like benefits. "The next general election is going to be the first full-blown scarcity election," he said. The debate is going to be about priorities within a shared assumption that we are going to have to make continued difficult savings. The Conservatives will abandon Mr Cameron's promise in 2015, he predicted. He added: "I will be gobsmacked if in that context that any sensible, responsible political party will think it's explicable or justifiable to say millionaire pensioners will not be affected at all. Any political party that goes into to next general election committing not to touch a single hair on the head of benefits for the most affluent people in the country will be found out. The winter fuel payment is given at a flat rate of up to £300 regardless of a person's wealth. Mr Clegg said it was politically untenable to make big cuts in housing benefit and other benefits while retaining universal benefits for people who "don't need it." He said: "The idea that you exempt millionaire and multimillionaire pensioners uniquely from further savers is completely irrational. And by the way, it is not supported by many of those people, many of them are voluntarily giving it back. Nick Hurd, the Conservative charities minister, last month told the Daily Telegraph that he would "support, congratulate and encourage" anyone who chose to give away their annual fuel payment to good causes. Saga, the over-50s group, has called on pensioners who feel they do not need their winter fuel payment to donate the money to help poorer old people pay their fuel bills. Better-off pensioners who ring in to the Telegraph's annual Christmas charity appeal often donate their winter fuel payment.