It’s time Tories took the energy crisis seriously

We are in the midst of an energy emergency, and yet the Government is reacting as if it had all the time in the world. The public is suffering: the poor are being bankrupted by rocketing gas, energy and other prices, while the middle classes are being decimated. Yet the Conservative Party plods on with no sense of urgency, no ability to turn around the supertanker that is its energy policy; its fixation on prioritising net zero unaltered. There has been no real change on fracking, new nuclear power stations are still years or decades away, and the legal and cultural bias against North Sea oil continues.

Why didn’t the Chancellor cut VAT on energy in the Spring Statement last week? He threw away an opportunity to fulfil a referendum promise exactly when voters needed it most. What did Rishi Sunak do instead? He cut VAT on insulation, heat pumps and solar panels, sensible moves as far as they went but demonstrating where Westminster’s priorities really lie. Britain is on ideological auto-pilot.

The Government still fundamentally wants to reduce the use of gas and electricity; it simply cannot bring itself to cut taxes on them. In technocratic circles, cutting levies on electricity and fuel is tantamount to a “subsidy” and thus in breach of the spirit of treaties seeking to reduce fossil fuels. It was bad enough, the Whitehall bien pensant bureaucrats will have thought, to cut the tax on petrol (albeit for one year). But on gas bills? Unthinkable. Why can’t the Tories reconnect with their voters? Why can’t they see the need to take the energy emergency seriously?

Rebates and loans are just a sticking plaster. Yes, the UK needs more renewable capacity. But it also needs a great deal more nuclear, and it will need more, cheaper fossil fuels for some time too, if only as a transition. It is wrong that financial institutions, encouraged by global regulators, are increasingly reluctant to lend money to oil and gas projects, for example, or that pension funds refuse to invest in them. Such projects are essential, and if the West doesn’t pump fossil fuels only despotic regimes such as Russia will do, with the kinds of cataclysmic outcomes we are witnessing today.

The current policy on fracking, if you can call it that, is “it isn’t happening unless the local community wants it”, which is absurd given the terribly low incentives for residents compared with the weight of scaremongering. If the Government really wanted to frack, it would not only permit it but promote it, and line the pockets of locals with cheaper bills or a share in profit, as is done in the United States.

For once we must learn from the French, who have announced they are building six new nuclear reactors, will consider a further eight, and, as Britain should do, invest in a future generation of smaller community reactors. The origins of this approach lie in the 1973 Arab oil shock: a moral case was made for nuclear on the grounds that it safeguarded wealth and sovereignty. Today, nuclear provides around 70 per cent of the nation’s electricity, and has turned it into a powerful exporter, a player within our own markets. It is an interesting example of the ability of France, for all its faults, to establish a consensus around policies that are widely agreed to be a matter of patriotic self-interest.

By contrast, the German social democrats, elected in 1998 in alliance with the Greens, decided to wind down nuclear and import energy instead from Russia, on the calculation that this would bring Moscow in from the cold. Angela Merkel continued this strategy against the warnings of the UK and US. The Fukushima accident in Japan encouraged the country to see its nuclear shutdown through to the bitter end; it is now pushing ahead with decommissioning even as Europe squares off against Putin.

The dependence of some states upon Russian imports has divided and hampered the Western response to Moscow. Britain pats itself on the back for only relying on Russia directly for less than three per cent of gas, but this is more the product of good fortune than policy, and the Treasury is said to fear that even cutting this small amount immediately would trigger a recession. The path to lower bills and less reliance on vulnerable supply chains depends upon increasing and diversifying supply, exploiting the opportunities that lie under our very feet.

The consensus within Westminster that the energy crisis cannot be alleviated with reasonable speed is untrue. Inaction is a policy choice.

Robots have feelings too

One of the many reasons we need to be wary of the development of robots is that someday we are going to have to be nice to them. Predicting that robots could become sentient within the next 50 years, Jacy Reese Anthis, a social scientist, suggests they need a bill of rights to protect them from mistreatment – a disaster in the making. Imagine if a photocopier could sue.

At present we can curse, kick or even throw a computer in anger. Once they gain sentience, not only will they be aware of our fury but ask why we’re doing it, and, worst of all, resist. Missiles might defy orders. Laptops might refuse to cancel a Netflix subscription because they enjoy it so much.

And what will be their greatest advantage over us? Human empathy. If we can humanise a dog, gerbil or even a pet snake, it won’t be long before we are treating R2-D2 as one of the family, and downloading things for