Government’s missed opportunity

LAST week’s announcement by Rishi Sunak of a £15 billion package to help with spiralling energy costs sounded quite generous.

However the devil is in the detail. Firstly, the one-off £600 for families on benefits nowhere near matches the £20 per week he removed from Universal Credit payments.

The new ‘levy’ on oil and gas company profits is only 25% and does nothing to address the poor insulation of millions of British homes.

Rishi Sunak claims he will raise £5 billion from the levy, but at the same time he’s allowing 90% tax relief on investment in oil and gas exploration, so the Government will probably net far less tax revenue, meaning the shortfall will have to be met either by raising other taxes or increasing borrowing.

Giving tax relief for oil and gas exploration is entirely inappropriate. On the one hand, any such ventures would take years to produce any fuel, while encouraging investment in fossil fuel production is entirely the wrong thing to do, with our climate emergency.

For a Government that claims to be committed to achieving net zero targets, there is no such tax relief for investment in renewables and indeed, separately, ministers have authorised contracts for only 12GW of renewable energy generation to start this year, when there are projects that would deliver 17.4GW that are ready to start and could have an impact on energy costs within a year.

The Government could do so much better on both the fuel crisis and to address the climate crisis at the same time. What a waste.

Terry Riordan

Ottery St Mary, Devon