09 February 2023 , 21:06
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Charities yesterday called on the Chancellor to put off huge hikes in gas and electricity bills due on April 1.
They warned that lifting the so-called energy price cap by 20% to £3,000 a year would be “a national act of harm”.
It will throw another 1.7 million households into fuel poverty, bringing the total to 8.4 million – which is more than one in four.
Yet with falling prices on the energy market, the Government could afford to postpone the hit on families for three months – when the cap may become redundant.
But faced with this scenario, Rich Rishi Sunak’s irrelevant answer is yet another Whitehall department with a clapped-out failing politician in charge.
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Grant Shapps, the new Secretary for Energy Security and Net-Zero, had this job once before and made a hash of it.
Like his time as Transport Secretary, Home Secretary and Tory Party chairman. And this Napoleon of Watford, vain enough to fancy himself as prime minister, is the man to fix the fuel poverty crisis?
I don’t know about net zero but I do know his chances of sorting out the disaster of energy privatisation are less than zero.
When he had the chance, he failed to do anything about the disintegrating UK energy market. Supply companies collapsed by the dozen, throwing millions into fuel chaos and costing the taxpayer billions.
The Government did nothing about British Gas and others breaking into people’s homes to fit cash-devouring pre-payment meters until they were exposed by investigative journalists.
This lot’s record on energy is one of complacency, craven worship of “the market” and incompetence.
Of course, Tory ministers and MPs don’t pay all their own heating bills. We do. But not for very much longer.