Windfall tax is not ‘off the table’, says Sunak

A windfall tax on energy company profits is not “off the table”, Rishi Sunak has stated.

The chancellor of the exchequer made the remark during a House of Commons debate on cost of living on Tuesday (17 May) in which he came under pressure from Ed Miliband to adopt Labour’s proposed windfall tax on oil and gas companies.

Urging Sunak to “swallow” his pride and “get on with it”, the shadow energy and climate change secretary said: “Every day he delays is another day when the British people are denied the help they need. Millions of families are having sleepless nights because the chancellor will not act.”

Responding to Miliband, Sunak said: “Conservatives do not believe that windfall taxes are the simple and easy answer to every problem. However, we are pragmatic, and we want to see our energy companies, which have made extraordinary profits at a time of acutely elevated prices, investing those profits back into British jobs, growth and energy security.

“If that does not happen soon and at significant scale, no option is off the table.”

The debate also saw a call from a backbench Conservative MP for energy companies to be outlawed from disconnecting customers for non-payment of bills.

Laura Trott, MP for Sevenoaks, said energy companies should be prohibited from disconnecting domestic customers, as the water industry already is.

She proposed that energy companies could still take people to court for debts, but would be barred from cutting off supply, extending provisions that already apply to certain types of vulnerable customers so that people’s homes are not cut off in “the very worst circumstances”.

Alex Sobel, shadow environment minister, called for a “quantum leap in ambition” from the government’s Energy Security Bill, which was unveiled in last week’s Queens Speech.

He said the bill should also contain measures to take forward a “retrofit revolution”, including the establishment of a “serious” delivery body to adequately insulate every building in Britain.

Meanwhile, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee has called on the government to “significantly” scale up its plans for the installation of heat pumps.

The government’s response to the committee’s recent report on heat decarbonisation, which was on Wednesday (18 May), accepted a number of its recommendations, including giving Ofgem powers to regulate heat networks.

However, the response does not have any new proposals to improve domestic energy efficiency, the committee noted.

Its chair Darren Jones MP said: “The government must supercharge its efforts to decarbonise the way we heat our homes to help reduce bills and carbon emissions.”

“However, the Future Homes Standard – which will require housing developers to better insulate new homes and install low carbon heating systems – will still not come into effect until 2025. This will put many new homeowners and tenants in the scandalous position where they have a new home but will be asked to fork out thousands of pounds to do the work that the developer should have done in the first place.”

And he described as “ridiculous” that many households won’t be able to access the government’s new Boiler Upgrade Scheme vouchers because they need to complete home insulation upgrades before applying.