PM TRUSS will limit energy bill rises for all households for two years as the new Prime Minister tries to prevent the British economy from collapsing.
A typical household energy bill will be capped at £2,500 annually until 2024.
There is to be no windfall tax on the great oil and gas companies. They will continue to make their billions of profits. The Tory support scheme will cost up to £150bn, which the working class will have to pay back in higher energy prices.
There is to be no additional support for the most vulnerable. As a result, many millions will be in fuel poverty this winter.
The energy price cap – the highest amount suppliers are allowed to charge households for every unit of energy they use – had been due to rise by 80% on 1 October. This would take the typical household energy bill to £3,549.
To limit the amount customers’ bills go up by, the government will compensate energy firms for the difference between the wholesale price for gas and electricity they pay and the amount they can charge customers.
The money to cover the support will be borrowed by the government, adding to the UK’s already large debt pile. This comes after Truss rejected calls to extend a windfall tax on gas and oil company profits to pay for the package.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the refusal to fund it with a windfall tax showed she was ‘driven by dogma’ and ‘it’s working people who will pay for that’.
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey accused the government of bringing in a ‘phoney freeze’.
‘This will still leave struggling families and pensioners facing impossible choices this winter as energy bills almost double,’ he said.
‘Liz Truss and the Conservatives are choosing to allow this huge hike to people’s heating costs, while refusing to properly tax the eye-watering profits of oil and gas companies.’
Truss also outlined plans ‘to make sure we have security of energy supply for the long term’.
This includes issuing new oil and gas exploration licences for the North Sea and lifting the ban on fracking for shale gas ‘where there is local support for it’.
In addition the government will:
- Launch a new oil and gas licensing round as early as next week, boosting production in the North Sea.
- Seek to negotiate lower-priced long-term contracts with renewable and nuclear power companies.
In response, Labour leader Keir Starmer said: ‘We’re in the middle of a national emergency people are really scared of.
‘Families don’t know if they can warm their homes this winter and businesses ask if they can keep the lights on.
‘That is why the Labour Party is fighting for a price freeze so that no household would pay a penny more on their bills.
‘When we called for it, many people said we were wrong, they pretended that this crisis was something that just affected the poorest, as if working families on average wages could easily shoulder astronomical bills.
‘They dismissed our call for support as hand-outs, but those objections could never last.’
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘The Prime Minister is making the wrong people pay. She should have imposed a much larger windfall tax on profiteering oil and gas giants.
‘And she should have required all firms getting help with energy bills to commit to no lay-offs for the lifetime of the help, to protect livelihoods.’
World stock markets have taken fright at the scale of borrowing the new UK Prime Minister is planning. The pound has fallen to its lowest level against the US dollar since 1985 at £1.14 to the dollar.
A UK economic collapse is underway!
