WINDFALL TAX AN OBVIOUS SOLUTION ON COST OF LIVING

WITH the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasting that living standards would suffer their biggest annual fall since records began in 1956/7 and Chancellor Sunak declaring that the government’s resources are precarious, a windfall tax on oil companies – which could easily offset the worst of household inflation – is back on the agenda.

Without moving a muscle, these companies are swimming in cash from high oil and gas prices.

BP’s boss, Bernard Looney, called his company a “cash machine” and said that it possibly has “more cash than we know what to do with”.

The Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has poured cold water on the plan, asserting that advocates of a windfall tax “misunderstand how business works” and that it would undermine investment.

This is not just a red herring – it is wrong. Business investment, by its nature, is planned over five years or more in advance and based