Gas and Electricity Costs

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I start by congratulating my dear hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on bringing forward this important debate. I also commend the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), who this week has had the backbone to stand up for her constituents on the cost of living crisis, while the Prime Minister seems to have inadvertently misled himself as to whether or not he attended a party. That does rather stick in the throat and perhaps shows the priorities of this Government.

This issue really matters because it matters to millions. Like many, I have received emails from concerned constituents. One, Margaret, is desperately concerned. Some 3,000 people in Oxford West and Abingdon are already classed as being in fuel poverty, and she is concerned about how many more are going to succumb. She is right to be. Jessica, who lives literally 10 minutes down the road from Margaret, emailed me on the same day. She is already classed as being in fuel poverty. She is considered vulnerable by her energy supplier. She currently pays £85 a month for her energy and has been told that that is going to increase to £200 a month—she says that there is no way she can afford those kinds of prices. Dave, who is on £10 an hour, contacted me with a similar story and Jane, who is a pensioner, told me that when she looks at what she will have to pay, she knows that she simply does not have the money. I ask the Minister: what are these people meant to do?

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I also welcome this debate and thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for securing it. My constituency of Manchester, Gorton has long faced a fuel poverty crisis. In 2019, almost a quarter of families there were in fuel poverty; given current concerns about sky-rocketing fuel bills, the number will now undoubtedly be substantially higher. Does the hon. Member agree that this issue predates today’s cost of living crisis and that this Government have overseen a dramatic rise in fuel poverty without taking any of the action necessary to mitigate it?

[Layla Moran]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I absolutely agree. I am also deeply concerned that the problem will get worse over the next few weeks. We have only to read the emails or listen to the stories to be moved by them. Martin Lewis, who was mentioned earlier, dedicated an entire episode of his “Martin Lewis Money Show Live” to energy prices the other day. Afterwards, he tweeted that he was “near tears” after being unable to help a single mother, who had recently lost her partner, to afford her energy bills. He called on the Government to do more, and I agree with Martin.

The Minister will have heard many good suggestions today. My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross mentioned cutting VAT on bills, a social tariff and an increase in the winter fuel allowance. Age UK has suggested a £50 one-off payment to those eligible for the cold weather payment and a doubling of household support. All those could work, and we have to ask the question: when are they going to come in? People are already hurting now.

There is also a secondary question, and a correct one: who is going to pay for it? Even more galling than all I have discussed is that after hearing all these stories of hardship and heartache, Gazprom announced a dividend of £179 million. Energy giants such as Gazprom are profiteering from the misfortunes of others. Frankly, the Government are complicit because they are letting them.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Lady mentions Gazprom and how the UK is in hock to such gas producers from outside the UK. If we cast our minds back, do we not see that a mistake of George Osborne’s penny-pinching, bean-counting style of five, six or seven years ago was his reluctance to use the climate change levy to invest in renewables to make us less dependent on energy from overseas and give us more renewable capacity, which could have been built here? For the sake of a few pennies, it was his argument—I disputed it at the time, when I was the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee—that we should not do so. Now the customers of the UK are on the hook for hundreds and hundreds of pounds each and every year.

[Layla Moran]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. It is for exactly that strategic reason that the Liberal Democrats are calling for a Robin Hood tax on the super-profits of oil and gas companies. This one-off levy would raise over £5 billion to support households in need of help. Surely that is the fairest way to help the worst off.

However, there is a wider geopolitical point. Gazprom, as we know, is owned by the Russian state, and Gazprom, at the behest of Putin, sent 25% less gas than before to Europe in the last year. We all know that Putin is playing politics with our energy prices, and that is making all of us and our constituents suffer. On one hand, the Government say they will not reward Russia for aggression; on the other hand, by doing nothing about the situation, they are allowing Putin to manipulate the energy market and he is being rewarded for it. We believe that instituting a Robin Hood tax would have many advantages, but one would be to send a powerful message to Putin in Moscow: “You cannot interfere with our energy market”.

Fundamentally—this comes to the point that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) made—in the long term we need to wean this country, and indeed the entire world, off gas and oil altogether as soon as possible. That is why the answer to this problem is not to cut investment in green energy, as some have suggested. Whether it comes into general taxation or there is another way to fund it—that is the conversation that needs to be had—we need to increase investment in renewable energy, because to protect people now we need to think strategically in the medium and long term. The answer is to end our dependency on rogue states and protect the poorest in our communities.

[Alan Brown]

I just wonder how a Robin Hood tax on oil companies operating in the North sea would affect reliance on Putin or Gazprom, or how it would affect Gazprom’s share price or dividend. Those things seem to me to be almost diametrically opposite.

[Layla Moran]

We need to ensure that there is fairness in the system, and we know that all oil and gas companies have made enormous profits. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) made the point earlier about customers who had been loyal to oil and gas companies but who now face high bills, when the companies themselves are profiteering. There are many reasons why a Robin Hood tax would work, but one is the geopolitical point that I am making today.