3 February 2022
Ofgem is expected to announce a rise in the energy price cap which will add about £600 a year to the average household energy bill.
In response, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said:
“The day after the Government unveils its “levelling up” plan, struggling families learn that they’ll be hit with a huge rise in their fuel bills while energy companies resemble “cash machines” with huge pay-outs for shareholders. Some levelling up.
“This is a crisis which impacts communities across our country and it’s one that the Government has just watched unfolding.
“Its belated reported proposal to extend loans to energy companies is a short-term sticking plaster which does nothing to tackle the root causes of the problem – our dependence on international gas prices rather than increasing sources of home-grown publicly owned renewables – together with some of the leakiest housing stock in western Europe.
“We are all paying the price for the short-sightedness of previous Tory governments who sat on their hands, slowing down the essential transition away from fossil fuels and scrapping energy-efficiency measures like insulation which would cut demand.
“The solution lies not in a rapid U-turn to the fossil fuel era as demanded by some Tory MPs but in rapidly speeding up the transition to renewable energy so we address the climate emergency AND make ourselves less vulnerable to global price rises.
“Ministers should support the growing calls for a windfall tax on the huge profits of the energy companies, together with measures that treat energy as an essential public good.
“Most urgently of all, we need a nationwide home insulation programme to give people warm homes, cut energy use and create thousands of good, green jobs across the country.
“High gas prices will be with us for some time. We need to leave fossil fuels behind us and in the ground as soon as possible, and create an energy system fit for the future.”
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