Ministers must act on energy

Short and long-term plan calls

ELSIE IS a name that will be familiar to many after Susanna Reid’s interview with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Good Morning Britain this week.

The presenter grilled a rudderless Mr Johnson about how he could help the 77-year-old, who viewers heard had resorted to spending all day on buses to stay warm amid the soaring cost of living.

It is testimony completely at odds with the fact that oil giant Shell has since posted earnings of £7.2bn for the first three months of 2022 – nearly three times the £2.5bn reported a year earlier. On Tuesday, fellow FTSE 100 firm BP had unveiled its highest quarterly underlying profits for more than a decade, at £5bn. This comes as the Bank of England warns that the UK is heading for 10 per cent inflation and a potential recession as it increased interest rates to one per cent – more pain for Elsie, and everyone else.

Yorkshire MP Ed Miliband has said the Conservatives have “run out of excuses” to not act on calls for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies and Shell itself said it will invest £20bn to £25bn in the UK in the next decade in low carbon energy and in UK gas and oil supplies.

The Yorkshire Post calls on Kwasi Kwarteng, Secretary of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and his colleague Greg Hands, Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, to present the nation with a clear strategic pathway for affordable and sustainable energy.

And while that long-term solution is vital, immediate support for the Elsies of this world, in many cases those who are vulnerable and desperate, will be critical.

As this paper has said previously, Ministers appear to believe that they have a stay of execution over the energy crisis because of the warmer summer months.

It will soon become autumn, however, and then winter – and their inaction could, without exaggeration, prove deadly.