Older people are entitled to help with their heating bills, free bus travel and free television licences, but there are growing calls for these to face the same cuts as unemployment payments and other benefits for working-age people.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith told the Sunday Telegraph there were "no plans to change" the current system, which Prime Minister David Cameron promised to protect at the last election.
But he told the newspaper: "It is up to them, if they don't want it, to hand it back. I would encourage everybody who reads the Telegraph and doesn't need it, to hand it back."
The welfare reforms introduced by Duncan Smith, a former leader of Cameron's Conservative party, have been strongly criticised for hitting families already struggling amid the economic gloom.
He argues that the changes, introduced amid a major programme of spending cuts designed to reduce the deficit, are intended to ensure people are better off in work than living on state handouts.