UK Energy Costs

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Although the solutions to this crisis may sound complicated in this debate, the choice is straightforward for the Government: who pays at the end of the day? Let us be clear what a windfall tax is. It does not tax profits that energy companies had planned for and could have expected in all reason. This windfall has come about, as the Government have said themselves, as a consequence of what is happening in Ukraine and the aggression by Putin. The question that I have and my constituents will have is: how can the Government reasonably come to a conclusion that it is okay for those energy companies to make these huge profits on the back of that aggression by Putin?

No matter what we do over the windfall tax, there will be a cost to the taxpayer because the Government are under pressure in other areas of expenditure. We only have to look at the newspapers today to see how, yet again, the number of people waiting for operations in the NHS has gone up to 6.8 million; and how the cost of living is forcing teaching assistants to question whether they can commit themselves to supporting children in schools or should move to higher-paid jobs, such as in supermarkets. Everywhere we look, the Government are under pressure over public expenditure on our vital public services. Yet they are prepared to wave aside the potential to pay for these increases through a windfall tax.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend mentions teaching assistants because one contacted me recently. Many low-paid workers and others on moderate incomes be staggered by the Government’s decision to put the interests of energy companies ahead of those of normal families.

[Clive Efford]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government are morally wrong to turn their back on a windfall tax when they are clearly under financial pressure in other areas of public expenditure.

In my brief contribution, I want to raise one specific issue relating to my constituency. I have a craft bakery that has survived for 100 years and is about to celebrate its centenary. It has been run by six generations of the same family. It kept feeding people in my constituency—I was not the MP at the time, I hasten to add—during the second world war, so even the Luftwaffe could not shut down this bakery. It employs 20 members of staff, in an industry where energy use is really heavy, and faces cost increases of 300% or 400%, so it is trying to renegotiate its energy contracts. As the statement published by the Government says—I have it here; on such an important crisis, its sheer length is 200 words—there will be assistance for businesses equivalent to that given to individuals, guaranteed “for six months”. The Prime Minister said—I wrote these words down—that businesses would be given some idea of what assistance they will get “within three months”, but they are negotiating now. We had no clarity from the Prime Minister in her statement. It was as though she was making a Queen’s Speech—“My Government will”—but she gave us no detail on what Ministers will be doing.

One thing I want a guarantee on is that, if we are to get a financial statement from the Government next week or before the conference recess, we will have a proper debate in this Chamber, as we are required to have. Or will the Government avoid scrutiny—as has been a repeated action—yet again?