Voters swing behind taxes to support fuel poor

An increasing share of voters are prepared to accept higher taxation to support energy bills but less than half believe their homes need more insulation, polling has showed.

In its response to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee’s ongoing inquiry into the government’s energy bills safety net schemes, the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank has outlined the findings of polls carried out to inform research it has been carrying out with Citizen’s Advice into future support for customers.

According to the poll, which was carried out by the agency Public First, just over half (52%) of voters said they would be prepared to accept higher taxation to fund bill support in July 2022.

This figure had increased to 64% by October, according to the response.

The same polling showed that the most popular option for providing bills support is energy unit discounts for targeted customers.

Just over two-thirds (66%) of voters supported this proposed discount, which would make each unit of energy used cheaper for 8.3 million households, including benefits-recipient households and all others with annual incomes under £25,000.

Two-thirds of beneficiaries from this discount would be households in the bottom three income deciles and it would cost the Treasury £6.7 billion, according to the SMF’s response.

Just over half (51%) of voters supported extending the Warm Homes Discount for low income households from its current level of £150 to 27-33% of the total bill, which would work out at around £900.

The concept of the rising block tariff, which makes each block of energy used by a household progressively more expensive, is only supported by 32% of the voters polled by Public Frist.

The response flags up the risk that a household’s energy use is often very loosely related to its income and that 26% of households in the poorest decile could lose under a rising block tariff while 62% of the richest tenth would gain.

The polling also shows that a “surprising” 54% of homeowners don’t believe they need more insulation, underlining how increased uptake of such measures will require a greater level of public awareness of energy efficiency issues.

And it found that 14% of homeowners would not be willing to contribute to improving the energy efficiency of their homes, while only 10% of homeowners would be willing to contribute £3,000 plus.

In addition, the polling showed low support for more localised wholesale pricing of electricity, which is one of the key planks of last summer’s government Review of Electricity Market Arrangements consultation paper.

Just 18% of voters polled favoured locational pricing for both homes and businesses, which was about half the 35% who believed the price paid by homes and businesses for electricity should be uniform across the country.

Locationally cost reflective pricing for businesses with all homes paying the same was supported by 21% of those polled by Public First.

The polling will feed into a report, due to be published this month by Citizen’s Advice and the SMF, which will examine the future of energy costs support for customers.