Caroline Lucas: This moment required visionary thinking – not outdated economic dogma
The country is facing multiple crises of staggering proportions: an energy security crisis, a cost of living scandal, and an accelerating climate emergency. This moment required bold, visionary thinking grounded in compassion – not cold and outdated economic dogma.
It did not call for fracking – a disaster for climate policy, and a measure which would fail to meet even 1% of our energy needs for more than three years.
It did not call for a suspension of green levies, when we know that 90% of the rise in the price cap is caused by spiralling global gas prices.
And while it did call for a price cap freeze, it should not be at the unaffordable rate of £2,500 when households are already struggling to make ends meet – it must be backdated to last October’s level, and accompanied by measures including reinstating and doubling the universal credit uplift.
We urgently need a retrofit revolution, a massive investment in domestic insulation to deliver warmer homes and lower bills – yet Liz Truss failed to even mention the words “energy demand reduction” or “efficiency”.
It called for policies that will help deliver energy security while simultaneously incentivising demand reduction for wealthier households. A rising block tariff, for example, would help end fuel poverty and ensure proper targeting of support for the poorest.
And with new renewables now nine times cheaper than gas, the 650 wind and solar projects oven-ready and waiting can and should be delivered right now.
The prime minister wanted to “deliver” – but she has delivered sticking plasters rather than a bold vision of clean, green and affordable energy for the long term.
Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion
Miatta Fahnbulleh: Communities, not energy companies, are being asked to foot the bill
Liz Truss’s intervention to freeze the energy price cap for 18 months is a big one that shows the government has finally grasped the scale of the challenge. It will stop the catastrophic rise in energy prices and provide immediate relief to millions.
But there is a sting in the tail. By refusing to ask energy companies – making £170bn of excess profits over the next two years – to foot the bill, this may well come at the cost of investment in public services, communities and the transition to clean energy that we so desperately need.
And for families on low-to-modest incomes, energy bills of £2,500 a year will be a sizeable hit when combined with the rising cost of food and everyday essentials. Yet the government has done very little to protect people from wider cost of living pressures by boosting their incomes.
There is an alternative. After a six-month freeze, the government could introduce a system of free basic energy with a rising tariff for more energy use, alongside a major effort to insulate our homes. It could provide a £750 cost of living allowance for all households – paid for through a tougher windfall tax on energy companies – plus an energy top up to benefits worth £1,000. This would offset the full cost of living rises for 80% of families and gear support towards those who need it most.
Miatta Fahnbulleh is chief executive of the New Economics Foundation
Isabel Hardman: Truss wants to be seen as someone transforming Britain
Today’s announcement was intensely political. The way it was made shows that Liz Truss doesn’t want to be seen just as the prime minister trying to fix problems (of which there are many), but as someone who is transforming Britain. She wants to campaign on her announcement, rather than just tick it off her lengthy to-do list.
She used a Commons debate, rather than the normal ministerial statement, to outline her plans. This meant that she wasn’t taking questions from MPs across the house for an hour or so. Instead, she made her speech, Keir Starmer made his, and then everyone else made theirs. Both she and Starmer were happy to play up the divide between their parties over the funding of the policy, and both think their arguments suit them.
For Truss, it is about making sure the businesses in this sector aren’t strangled. For Starmer, it is about showing that Labour is on the side of working people, not profit-making giants. Because of their contentment with their positions, we will see both sides making as much of today’s announcement as they can. The difference, though, is that Truss won’t be quite so keen on detailed scrutiny of what she’s announced – which is another reason she didn’t go for a format where she’d have to answer questions.
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator and a presenter of Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster
Max Wakefield: She promises to fix a fossil fuelled crisis with more fossil fuels
Liz Truss looks to have chosen to double down on the mistakes of her predecessors, with a promise to fix a fossil fuelled crisis with more fossil fuels, and a continued refusal to help us insulate our homes. While finding vast sums to prevent people freezing in their homes this winter is now unavoidable – and thus should be met as much as possible by a windfall tax on the very oil and gas firms this £130bn will flow to – the permanent solutions to energy crises have once again been left out in the cold by a government hellbent on ignoring them.
Actual policies to promote cheap onshore wind, solar power and home insulation measures are nowhere to be found among the glut of doomed measures designed to dig up yet more carbon to burn. They will do nothing to bring down bills – or indeed floodwaters in Pakistan. Successive Conservative governments have wilfully dismissed solutions that would have reduced our reliance on gas – and our contribution to the climate crisis – over the last decade. For now it looks as if we must continue to pay the price of their incompetent leadership.
Max Wakefield is director of campaigns for the climate action group Possible
