Even before yesterday’s UK Government Budget, it was clear our energy bills were only going one way, and it wasn’t down.
New analysis of Labour’s energy policies published last week showed average household energy bills are likely to be at least £150 higher in the next five years thanks to Ed Miliband’s net zero obsession.
The SNP’s same enthusiasm for onshore windfarms, with projects routinely approved against the wishes of directly affected communities, contributes to the cost because the operators are paid to switch off the turbines when the grid is in danger of overloading. In the first two months of this year, these so-called “constraint” payments cost around £500 million, which just gets passed on to the consumer.
It will be the same this winter, and although the energy price cap is set to rise a fraction in January, adding a barely noticeable 28p to monthly electricity bills, that’s after a two per cent rise last month, and despite wholesale energy prices actually dropping four per cent in the past three months. If that reduction was passed on to consumers then it could have saved the average households a much more meaningful £70 a year.
In fact, money saving expert Martin Lewis estimated the energy bills for those on standard tariffs with high electricity use and low or no gas use will rise by three to four per cent on January 1, and it is all because of the Labour government’s energy policies. Happy new year, everyone.
Meanwhile hundreds of workers in the oil and gas industries are facing redundancy, and after the closure of the Grangemouth refinery and Mossmorran ethylene plant in Fife, it really has come to something when the leader of the GMB Scotland union likened the Labour government’s lack of action to the closure of coal mines in the 1980s.
Against the background of rising electricity costs it has been clear for some time that the SNP’s Heat in Buildings Bill, originally conceived by the Green Party as part of the Bute House coalition deal, to force householders to replace gas-fired boilers with expensive electric heat pump systems, would be utterly ruinous for hundreds of thousands of people.
It was welcome when, free from the grip of the Greens, the Bill was watered down in March and now the SNP’s housing minister Mairi McAllan has bowed to the inevitable and pulled the legislation.
But a draft bill has been published which aims to replace gas-fired systems “as far as reasonably practicable” by 2045, and the next parliament could decide to try again after the election.
But rather than admit the Bill was an electoral liability, Ms McAllan has the cheek to blame the UK Government for "repeated delays" to its warm homes plans for cutting fuel bills. Instead, she said it was “perverse” that she should not know about proposals which might have an impact on Scottish energy resources, when the SNP is just as guilty as Labour for shunning the abundant supply left under the sea.
Hypocritically, it turned out it was she who cancelled a face-to-face meeting with UK energy minister Martin McCluskey last week, where presumably she could have had her questions answered.
Is it really too difficult to bring some common sense to control Britain’s energy markets which are crippling householders and businesses alike? Bickering ministers certainly don’t help.
