Tax oil and gas firms to avert crisis for all

A COST-OF-LIVING crisis looms, with working people’s taxes and National Insurance to be hiked up from April.

Inflation could be supercharged by the widely expected 50%-plus rise in energy costs this year due to the gas price crisis. That would throw many, many more into poverty, in the North East and across the country.

How, then, does our prime minister describe the modest idea of a temporary stop to the 5% VAT? A “blunt instrument” (despite declaring it as a Brexit dividend, in his referendum campaign).

So, where could Mr Johnson and his lamentable government turn to protect us? Easy: the North Sea gas producers are expecting near-record cashflows in the current year of around £15bn, thanks to collecting at the obligatory, rocketed world prices.

Exact profit levels are, of course, hard to say, for their corporate tax minimising purposes, but this situation cries out for a windfall tax on these producers!

For one year at least, that could replace both the 5% VAT and all of the ‘green tax’ element of bills, and still leave plenty of government revenue from the collected tax, to lift consumers’ carbon reduction subsidies from their current minimal levels. Please ask your MP if she/he will support this. If you have a Conservative MP, also ask if she/he feels constrained by the fact that oil/ gas-linked individuals and companies gave their party £400,000 in the last year, according to the Electoral Commission (one of those awkward elements that the UK Government plan to muzzle, by the way).

RICHARD BIRMINGHAM – a member of the Labour Party