6 January 2022
- Greens reject Conservative MPs damaging suggestion to remove environmental levies
- Proposes plan which includes emergency grants for insulation improvements
- Co-leader Carla Denyer: “This government seems perfectly happy to walk straight into another national crisis, knowing full well that the people who will suffer most are already the most vulnerable in society”
As households face soaring energy bills in 2022, the Green Party has set out a five point plan to ensure everybody can have a warm home and lower bills, while protecting the climate at the same time.
Millions of people in England and Wales could be forced into choosing between heating their homes and eating if bills rise by 50% in April, when the energy price cap is updated by Ofgem, experts have warned. [1]
While Conservative MPs are calling for the backward and environmentally destructive step of removing vital environmental levies [2], the Green Party has set out clearly how households across the country can benefit from a raft of alternative measures.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said:
“Everybody has the right to a warm home, yet this year could see millions of people in England and Wales being forced to choose between heating their homes and eating. This simply cannot be allowed to happen.
“And less than two months on from the Glasgow climate talks we cannot allow the Conservatives to deny their own words by undercutting support for renewable energy.
“This government seems perfectly happy to walk straight into another national crisis, knowing full well that the people who will suffer most are already the most vulnerable in society.
“Three months ago the Green Party called for emergency winter fuel payments; four months ago we called for insulation grants and have been campaigning for better insulation for years. If the Government had listened to the Green Party in the autumn it could have prevented this bleak situation where millions of people face falling into fuel poverty.
“Today we’re presenting this five point plan which would ensure that everybody could afford to heat their homes and would help reduce carbon emissions in the long run.
“This is the sort of positive and radical action we need to protect the most vulnerable in society and ensure that we can all live a more comfortable life, at the same time as taking real action on climate change to provide longer-term security.”
The Greens are now urging the government to adopt its five point plan in order to protect the most vulnerable and ensure warm homes for all:
- Provide an emergency grant to homeowners, landlords and councils to fund immediate insulation improvements to those at risk of fuel poverty [3]
- Extend winter fuel payments to all by providing each household with an additional £320 to help them pay for spiralling energy costs and avoid fuel poverty [4]
- Make the polluters pay by introducing an immediate windfall tax on oil and gas company profits and a longer term policy of a carbon tax [5]
- Invest in domestic energy security by massively ramping up onshore and offshore wind and solar and reintroduce the feed in tariff at a high rate for homes and community projects
- Scrap the National Insurance (NI) increase, abolish the lower rate of NI on higher earnings and temporarily remove VAT from domestic fuel
Notes
1
https://inews.co.uk/news/households-facing-heat-or-eat-dilemma-energy-bill-surge-april-1381152
2
3
https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2021/09/20/emergency-insulation-grants-fuel-poverty/
4
5
Follow this news feed: Green Party