Praise for the Lib Dems’ call for October’s energy price rise to be scrapped from an unlikely source appears today. The Scotsman leader column says:
Labour’s party political point-scoring about Johnson being in office but not in government might impress some but hardly offers an alternative solution.
Instead it was left to the Liberal Democrats to come up with what sounds like an expensive but effective plan.
They called for the energy price cap to remain at its current rate with energy suppliers recompensed by government for rising wholesale prices to the tune of £36 billion, partly funded by an extended windfall tax on fossil fuel companies. As Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey rightly said, “this is an emergency, and the government must step in now”.
However, such furlough-style largesse can only be a temporary fix. The long-term solution is more complicated, given it involves addressing engrained problems of low wages and high housing costs that have left many people particularly vulnerable to sudden price shocks.
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3 Comments
The Scotsman I wrong about the longterm solution. The long term solution is to bring supply and demand for energy back into balance by keeping the price of hydrocarbon energy as high as possible but increasing generating capacity from renewable as quickly as we can, onshore and offshore wind and solar nuclear, tidal etc. A lot of insulation quickly would help too.
The coalition Lib Dems approved alternative energy which would be saving us billions if the Tories hadn’t scrapped it in 2015. Ted Heath banned price rises. That is all gov.uk has to do instead of reaping their dividends from shares in oil and gas companies to pay their bills. They are laughing at people. Gov.uk gives a subsidy of over £100m to N Sea oil companies, and only taxes at normal rates. Norway taxes them at 37% and puts it into a social fund which is now worth billions.
@Tristan
I couldn’t have put it better !