The BBC have re-heated an article from a year and a half ago titled UK mulling fuel poverty voucher, only this time it's titled 'Time for action' on fuel poverty:
A charter aimed at ridding Wales of fuel poverty by 2018 is being launched by charities and consumer groups. Campaigners say one in four Welsh households - 320,000 - experience fuel proverty, meaning they have to spend 10% or more of their income on heating. The chair of the Wales Fuel Poverty Coalition said they have united to say "now is the time for action".
In case the words 'charities', 'campaigners' and 'coalition' don't set alarm bells ringing, a quick squizz at National Energy Action's 2008 accounts shows their main subsidiary Warm Zones Limited received £12,210,580 from the government or local councils in the year (note 5, page 11), as well as £2,797,939 in grants from various government departments/local councils, including £2,285,287 from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (note 6, page 12). It had also built up a nice pot of £6,340,233 by the year end (Cashflow statement, page 9 - the column for 2008 is incorrectly headed 2007, natch).
The whole thing is bizarre. The government has been paying these people for years to 'campaign' for an end to fuel poverty and to subsidise home insulation, while simultaneously ensuring that domestic fuel prices - for example all the 'extra investment in renewables'*, the 5% VAT and allowing the gas suppliers to run a cartel (actually, I'm not sure whether they do, I have asked the expert in the comments here).
There's no need to make it so complicated! If you increase taxes on gas (preferably at the import stage rather than at point of end-use, like VAT), then home insulation becomes more attractive anyway by comparison, and if they scrapped all this loony 'extra investment in renewables' as well, then there'd be plenty of extra money for cutting vehicle excise duty, increasing the tax-free personal allowance or old age pensions so that the average user is no worse off (on a static basis) but putting a downward pressure on usage/encouraging people to insulate their homes.
* One of the dozens of other quangos that competes in this area is the Energy Savings Trust, which cheerfully admitted that [Annual domestic] Energy bills could go over £4,000 by 2020
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5 comments:
Somebody, somewhere has to be raking in some generous salary from this.
It's unbelievable the stuff that's happening in the background of some of these quangoes, charities and private companies...
"preferably at the import stage rather than at point of end-use, like VAT"
Ah - back to purchase tax!
Sue, exactly, but that involves digging one or two levels deer.
Umbongo, call it import duty, call it purchase tax, the further up the chain the better.
Complaining - it's like that song which said: "Don't pull the communication cord - with whom does the cord communicate?"
It's a brilliant scheme.
Team A are concerned about rising CO2 and so take various actions to drive up the price of fuel, with the expectation that people use less fuel and reduce CO2 output.
Team B are concerned that people spend too much on fuel and so take various actions to ameliorate their condition.
Objectives A must drive more people into fuel poverty or it won't work. Objective B must undermine objective A or it won't work.
The grand cry of socialism is "If an initiative isn't working spend more on it. Keep increasing spending until reality starts to match theory".
They really have got it sown up.
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