TORY PARTY leadership contender Truss has defended the billions of profits being made by the energy companies amid the soaring price rises that are pauperising the masses of workers and their families, by saying profits should not be considered ‘dirty and evil’.
The Tory leadership favourite said windfall taxes on profits – urged by some to fund help for hard hit working class households – were all about ‘bashing business’. She said cutting taxes was the best way to help with living costs over winter. The workers are to be left to freeze and starve.
Energy companies have posted bumper profits in recent months amid soaring gas and oil prices, prompting the calls to tax them further to help with rising bills.
Earlier this month, BP reported its biggest quarterly profit in 14 years – $8.45bn (£6.9bn) – while Shell posted a record profit of $11.5bn (£9bn).
Speaking at a hustings in Cheltenham, Tory leadership favourite Truss said she ‘absolutely’ did not support windfall taxes, calling it a ‘Labour idea’. She added: ‘It’s all about bashing business and it sends the wrong message to international investors and to the public.’
Asked about public perceptions of record profits, she added: ‘I don’t think profit is a dirty word, and the fact it’s become a dirty word in our society is a massive problem. But the way we bandy the word around “profit” (as if) it’s something that’s dirty and evil, we shouldn’t be doing that as Conservatives.’
Truss said she wanted to see more fracking, where supported by local communities, and labelled solar panels on agricultural land ‘depressing’. She also ruled out holding a general election before 2024, and said she would review how water regulators operate if she enters No 10.
Meanwhile BP has reported its biggest quarterly profit for 14 years after oil and gas prices soared. The energy giant saw underlying profits hit $8.45bn (£6.9bn) between April and June – more than triple the amount it made in the same period last year. It comes as typical household energy bills have been forecast to hit more than £4,200 a year in January.
BP’s profits were the second highest for the second quarter in the firm’s history. It follows a host of profit announcements from other firms including Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies and British Gas owner Centrica, which have been reaping the benefits of higher gas and oil prices.
Dale Vince, the founder of energy supplier Ecotricity said BP was ‘holding a shedload of money that is coming from hard-pressed bill-payers in our country’, adding he believed it was time to increase taxation on the profits of oil and gas companies.
Professor Nick Butler, a former vice president of BP, said he believed the energy giant was ‘very sensitive to the reputational problems of making money at this level’. He told the BBC there was a ‘real case’ for the government calling together the industry ‘to find a plan to get us through the winter’.
‘You have Europe as a whole now, cutting back gas use by 15% immediately, which is not happening here, and actually going out around the world to secure as much of the supply as they possibly can through the winter,’ he said.
The government has introduced a package of measures to help people with energy bills, such as a £400 discount, and following political pressure, ministers announced in May that oil and gas firms would pay an extra 25% on profits made in the UK.
The tax applies from 26 May to profit made in the UK, which for most oil and gas companies is a small part of their operations. For BP, it accounts for a tenth of overall oil and gas production.
BP will therefore not be required to pay the levy on the majority of the profits it made between April and June.
It is crystal clear that the working class is going to be forced to pay the huge bill for this crisis of capitalism, with the loss of millions of jobs and the slashing of wages and pensions, as they are wiped out by galloping inflation.
The only way forward to is to nationalise the oil and gas companies without compensation and to bring in a socialist nationalised and planned economy, based on satisfying people’s needs, not superexploiting them for a handful of capitalists.
Only the WRP and the Young Socialists are building the revolutionary leadership in the trade unions and amongst the masses of the youth that will be required in the coming days to force the TUC to call a general strike to overthrow the ruling class, and bring in a Workers’ Government and rule through workers’ soviets in the UK.
Capitalism is an out of date system that must be replaced by the World Socialist Republic.
