We must fight to oppose this energy rip off 

By Claudia Webbe MP 

We cannot wait for capitalism to grow a conscience — without direct government intervention, consumer prices will never get lower and the transition to a truly sustainable energy system will never happen, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE MP

BRITAIN is at a moment of crisis. Fuel poverty is now our number one societal scourge. People are worried about the months ahead and bills arriving on the doormat that they simply cannot afford to pay. We are the fifth richest country on the planet, we should be able to keep our citizens warm at an affordable price.

That eight million of our citizens were already living in fuel poverty before any of the recent price rises is alarming, but that figure is set to triple this winter. We cannot allow the push for profits to condemn yet more people to a cold and miserable winter, where cold homes place a burden on the health of our communities.

I am very worried that the 77 per cent rise in energy bills over the last year will make the figures above even worse. We used to say that people faced a choice between heating and eating. My fear and I suspect the reality, is that people can no longer afford to do either.

There is also a hidden racism behind this poverty that it is important to call out. Recently, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) concluded that deaths linked to poverty are more than twice as likely to affect ethnic minorities. With nearly 60 per cent of British Bangladeshi children, for example, born into poverty, we know that energy price rises will hurt our minority communities even more.

We need to pause and think about what the reality of living in fuel poverty means. Poverty kills. ONS data shows that 80,000 deaths in the UK over an eight-year period were directly linked to living in a cold home. The government say that one in seven winter deaths can be directly linked to fuel poverty.

All this data was gathered before any of the recent rises in energy bills. In other words, this is what things were like when bills were lower. Someone needs to speak out now before the drive for yet greater profits pushes more people into desperate levels of poverty where cold and damp homes cause disease and illness.

And what makes all of this even more lamentable, is that it is perfectly avoidable. We must not allow our politicians to get away with the mistruth that energy price rises are unavoidable. Energy companies paid £200 billion to their shareholders since 2010. Energy companies made £40 billion in profit last year alone.

They tell us that price rises are a consequence of the cost-of-living crisis, the Ukraine war or inflation but if this was the case, energy companies would struggle to make a profit. In fact, the opposite is happening. Shell tripled their profits in the first three months of 2022, BP doubled theirs. Energy companies are now making £1 billion profit a week. And their CEOs are paid on average more than a million pounds a year.

We often hear the excuse that wholesale gas prices have shot up and whilst that is sometimes true, we never hear about what happens when those wholesale prices fall. The reality is that our household energy bills went up 54 per cent on April 1 but wholesale prices have fallen back considerably.

Besides, energy corporations buy their gas months in advance so they can cope with the fluctuations in prices. Put simply, it is unacceptable for energy corporations to pass wholesale rises onto their customers and then sit on their hands when those prices fall. That is why we are right to call this an energy rip-off.

The privatisation of energy has failed, thus in reality there is only one solution to the energy crisis and that is bringing energy companies back into public ownership, with control of prices and nationalisation.

There is also another solution the political elite are choosing to ignore. Onshore wind and solar farms are four times cheaper than gas and twice as cheap as nuclear energy.

The government’s resistance to building green energy solutions is because they want to protect their political donations from the fossil fuel industry, which have surpassed £1.3 million since the 2019 general election. Ordinary people are being denied access to cheaper energy because the government are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.

The government could create green investment that allows communities to build their own renewable energy projects. It is simply unacceptable to continue to ignore green solutions to fuel poverty. Green energy could eradicate fuel poverty and save many thousands of lives. Every day we remain at the mercy of big energy corporations we risk losing more of our citizens.

Energy independence is what makes sense, but capitalists don’t look at the world in terms of what makes sense in the long run. What matters to them are the profits they are making today, regardless of the impact this has on lives and our planet.

For them, the more green energy is deployed, the more it lowers the price. The problem as they see it is that the rise of renewables is making it more difficult for big energy companies to make the kind of profits they are accustomed to making.

Markets are not capable of solving major social problems, precisely because they focus on individual behaviour when collective action is needed.

Now more than ever we need to fight to challenge and disrupt the fossil fuel industry and oppose their energy rip-off. We need an energy system that centres on human need, rather than private profit; one that can utilise the latest in renewable technology to provide an affordable and reliable supply of green energy to benefit all.

Claudia Webbe MP is the member of Parliament for Leicester East. You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe