Energy

Tuesday

Robert Halfon MP

We will never save the planet on the backs of the poorest

From our UK edition

Yesterday – in a crunch vote in the House of Lords – Labour were narrowly defeated by 216 votes to 202. The issue? Energy bills. Except, this time, the Labour Party was demanding that your bills should RISE by £125 a year. Confused? The quarrel yesterday was all about the ‘2030 decarbonisation target’ – a technocratic term, which means in essence a new carbon tax on your utility bills. It would be a tax on everything. A tax on your fridge, your kettle, your oven, your TV, and every light-bulb in your home. If Britain were to commit to this now, it would mean locking in expensive forms of electricity generation over the next 17 years. Labour voted for this to happen, and they nearly won.

Isabel Hardman

The private polling behind Labour’s energy bill swagger

From our UK edition

A select committee meeting with the Big Six firms would attract attention in any year when the companies had announced such eye-watering price rises. But it is the political frisson added by Ed Miliband's energy price freeze pledge that makes this afternoon's hearing quite so interesting. Labour had a swing in its step anyway as it feels it has successfully spooked the Coalition parties, but it carried out private polling last week, seen first by Coffee House, that underlined this. 70% of voters surveyed by YouGov for Labour thought the government should introduce a price freeze, with 17% rejecting it.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Off colour Ofgem?

From our UK edition

Ofgem is the energy market regulator that is supposed to be examining what it is that is going well or badly in the market. But it doesn't seem to be doing the greatest job. This week we will hear more details about the annual competition test announced by David Cameron at PMQs last week, but the problem is that Ofgem has only just concluded an examination of this anyway. That review of the retail energy market took two years and published a series of rule changes in June 2013. The changes were designed to address 'widespread consumer confusion over energy tariffs, poor supplier behaviour and lack of transparency which is stifling competition'.

Isabel Hardman

Energy competition heats up

From our UK edition

Now that ministers are nearing a deal on those green taxes and levies, they are also trying to highlight their efforts to improve the energy market in general. Privately there were a number of Conservative MPs of a similar persuasion to John Major who I spoke to last week who sympathised with the former Prime Minister's windfall tax proposal. They argued that the energy companies are benefitting from a broken market, and this tax would simply be a tax on the extra benefits of that broken market. But Greg Barker this morning argued that it would damage investment.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Coalition parties near a deal on energy bills

From our UK edition

The good news for the Cameroons on energy is that it looks like they’ll get an agreement by the Autumn Statement to take at least some of the green levies off energy bill. The bad news is that this means that the debate sparked by Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices for 20 months if elected is going to continue until, at least, December 4th. An agreement between Cameron and Clegg on energy bills does now appear to be close. The Lib Dem anger at Cameron using PMQs to try and bounce them into a set of concessions has been replaced by a fast-moving negotiation. As one senior Number 10 source says, ‘There’s lots of shouting and public posturing, but 12 hours later Clegg is signalling that he’s prepared to do business.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s 30-minute warning to the Lib Dems on energy bills

From our UK edition

The Lib Dems are cross this afternoon about David Cameron's PMQs announcements on cutting back on green taxes in energy bills. They are mainly cross because they were only given 30 minutes' notice of the new policy before MPs crowded into the Chamber for the session, and are insisting that 'nothing concrete has been agreed'. A source close to Nick Clegg told Coffee House; 'Generally you would hope that an announcement of government policy would not be handled in this way. There was a quad discussion about this but nothing detailed was put forward and nothing concrete has been agreed.

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Cameron is a buffoon who might as well eat his own manifesto

From our UK edition

At PMQs today, the Tories’s energy policy went bi-polar. The Conservatives now seem to touch both extremes of the debate. For eight years they’ve presented themselves as a gang of happy tree-huggers who applaud every green subsidy going. But today David Cameron announced his plan to ‘roll back some of the green regulations and charges’. John Major started it all. Yesterday he lurched back into front-line politics by suggesting that energy companies should pay a windfall tax this winter. Otherwise, he said, the poor will have to choose between starving or freezing to death. Number 10 called this bombshell ‘interesting’. Ed Miliband asked David Cameron if John Major was now a Marxist. ‘Has he been claimed by the red peril?

Isabel Hardman

Sir John Major and the Number 10 vacuum

From our UK edition

When Ed Miliband announced his eye-catching energy policy, Tory MPs hoped that their party would respond in kind with something similarly interesting to voters but that would really work. They hoped this would underline that the Conservative party is the party of government, while Miliband was only suitable for opposition. George Osborne's conference fuel duty freeze and his noises about green taxes and levies on fuel bills reassured many of them, but Sir John Major's intervention yesterday has highlighted the vacuum caused by a refusal by Number 10 to engage with what one strategist described to me as 'the footling little things'. One MP said after Major's speech: 'Number 10 is totally on the wrong page on this.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Transcript: John Major calls for an emergency tax on energy companies

From our UK edition

Sir John Major told a Westminster lunch this afternoon that the government should impose an emergency tax upon the energy companies to help families keep warm this winter. Here is a transcript of what the former Conservative Prime Minister said: I think when Ed Miliband made his suggestions about energy some weeks ago, I think his heart was in the right place but his head had gone walkabout. But he did touch on an issue that's very important. The private sector is something the Conservative party supports, but when the private sector goes wrong, or behaves badly, I think it's entirely right to make changes and put it right. Governments should exist to protect people, not institutions, and I very strongly agree with what the Archbishop of Canterbury had to say just the other day.

Jamie Reed

Nuclear should never be ‘the last resort’

From our UK edition

Yesterday’s agreement between the French state-owned company EDF and the UK Government regarding the ‘strike price’ for the electricity that will be generated by Hinkley C should be welcomed by everybody who cares about our environment, our economy and the security of our energy supplies. It’s taken three political parties, three Prime Ministers and two governments eight years to reach this point. Over this period, David Cameron has gone from espousing an investment-deterring policy of nuclear generation as ‘a last resort’ to welcoming the environmental and economic benefits of the industry in the shape of the deal that should pave the way for the construction of Britain’s first new nuclear reactor for a generation.

Friday

Steerpike

What’s wrong with wearing a woolly jumper for warmth?

From our UK edition

The moment that a Downing Street spokesman recommended wearing a jumper to reduce high energy bills, you knew that two things would happen. As sure as night follows day, the Labour leader spun a line criticising the ‘out of touch government’: Their crime policy used to be ‘hug a hoodie’. Now their energy policy appears to be ‘wear a hoodie’ - @Ed_Miliband — Labour Press Team (@labourpress) October 18, 2013 Then the internet spent Friday afternoon in stitches: Cameron heard about #jumpergate whilst in his car. Pull over!

Melanie McDonagh

Why bother to switch energy provider?

From our UK edition

The Prime Minister and the Energy Minister, Ed Davey, were unanimous in their response to the British Gas price hike this week by 10 per cent, about four times the rate of inflation – described judiciously by the PM as 'disappointing'. Shop around! they said. 'We need more competition!' cried Mr Davey. They haven’t yet recorded their opinion of today’s price increase from little Co-op, another energy provider, at about twice the rate of inflation, but I expect it will be much the same.

Friday

Alex Massie

If Ed Miliband is to become Prime Minister he needs more than gimmicks

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband, everyone seems to agree, has had a good few weeks, even months. Everyone agrees on this even though Labour's position in the polls is not significantly better now than it was before the summer. The Labour leader, and again on this everyone seems to agree, has been setting the agenda. David Cameron has been forced to respond to whatever Miliband has been talking about. From Syria to the Daily Mail to the cost of living it's been the leader of the opposition who has seized the initiative. As a result, Miliband looks stronger; Cameron somewhat diminished. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom and, as is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is not wholly nonsense. It has certainly become more difficult to make stick the charge that Miliband is a hopeless wet fish.

Alex Massie

Why won’t the SNP embrace the shale gas revolution?

From our UK edition

One of the odder elements of the current energy debate at present is that the political party that spends the most time talking about energy - that's the SNP by the way - is strangely reluctant to chase the opportunities afforded by the imminent shale gas revolution. It's a subject I consider in a column for The Scotsman today: Scotland’s oil resources are a vital national asset. Everyone, I think, knows this. If there were no remaining oil reserves waiting to be exploited in the North Sea, the economic case for independence would be severely weakened. Oil is a cushion and a comfort blanket.

Charles Moore

People want revenge on energy companies

From our UK edition

Friends of mine called Georgiana and Mouse Campbell recently bought a new house. In the period between completion and moving in, Mouse arranged for British Gas, who supplied the electricity, to switch the account to his name. British Gas said that this involved changing it from a business account to a residential one. While this was supposedly in progress, BG’s business division sent Mouse a bill for £299.80, although the Campbells’ actual use of electricity was virtually nonexistent. Despite many calls to BG, and its promises to sort things out, the company pursued Mouse for the fictional bill with threats of a debt recovery company and damaging his credit rating.

Thursday

John O'Neill

The green taxes that add £112 to your energy bill

From our UK edition

At PMQs yesterday David Cameron said Ed Miliband was suffering 'complete amnesia' over his time as energy secretary. Ed might have forgotten some of his climate change policies that put money on your energy bills - but it doesn't matter - they might not be around for long. As James Forsyth said at the weekend, George Osborne wants to get rid of some of them in his autumn statement. The Department of Energy and Climate Change says there are seven green taxes that put £112 on the average energy bill in 2013, making up just under a tenth of the total. What are they, and which of them is cost-of-living warrior Ed Miliband responsible for? 1. Home improvements for the fuel poor - adds £47 to the average bill. Miliband policy?

Sunday

James Forsyth

George Osborne attempts political jiu-jitsu on Ed Miliband

From our UK edition

If this conference season is remembered for anything, it will be for Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices. This pledge might be economically flawed but it has given the Labour leader a retail offer to voters and rebutted the charge that he doesn’t have any policies. Initially, the Tories were uncertain of how to respond. But, as I write in the Mail on Sunday, the Tory leadership has now decided what it wants to do. In George Osborne’s autumn statement, they want to remove some of the seven green taxes and levies that are driving up energy bills. Not only would this reduce the salience of Miliband’s pledge but it would also put him in a difficult position. As Energy Secretary he imposed several of these.

Thursday

Charles Moore

Charles Moore’s notes: At last! Reds under the beds again

From our UK edition

 Manchester For those of us of a certain age, Ed Miliband’s speech last week was exhilaratingly nostalgic. His promise to freeze energy prices reminded us of happy times when Labour policies were patently, shamelessly idiotic. At last, after a generation of loss, we began to hope to find reds under the bed again. In its understandable excitement, the Daily Mail made the mistake of finding only a dead red — Mr Miliband’s late father, Ralph. It then compounded its error by saying that Miliband senior ‘hated Britain’, on the basis of some angry remarks he made when aged 17.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

This isn’t a property bubble – it’s a reason to improve London’s transport

From our UK edition

Everyone —including me, if I’m honest — has been talking about a new property bubble. But is it for real? London house prices are rising at an annual rate of almost 10 per cent, and shares in the capital’s bellwether back-from-the-dead estate agency Foxtons soared on their stock market debut last week. Yet according to the Office for National Statistics, the national rise is just 3.3 per cent, the average price of a home having only recently regained its pre--credit-crunch peak. -Outside the South-East, and hotspots such as oil-rich Aberdeen, the pattern is largely flat or even falling.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The three groups helping Miliband drive his conference message home

From our UK edition

The Labour party held a briefing this morning for party campaigners on how they can follow up Ed's speech on the doorstep. Activists had arrived at conference hoping for a simple message that they can sell to a voter in a dressing gown with their arms crossed and a sceptical expression on their face, and now they've got one: frozen energy bills. They were told that campaigning on energy bills wasn't just something they can use on the doorstep this weekend, but a major digital and ground war campaign that is going to go on for months. The idea is to demand that David Cameron freeze bills now, using petitions. The party is handing out these ice cubes, although it quickly ran out at the briefing, with campaigners scrabbling over who should have one, because they carry such a clear message.