The Government is set to publish a new plan
Efforts to cut energy bills and warm homes will not come with a boiler levy, Ed Miliband has indicated. The Energy Secretary labelled news reports of a green charge “absolute nonsense”, and vowed to publish the Government’s warm homes plan “soon”.
Conservative shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho warned billpayers were “worried” about paying for heating and electricity during January’s cold snap.
Ms Coutinho told the Commons: “It’s freezing cold outside and people are worried about their energy bills, yet on top of all the other costs he’s lumped on people’s bills, it’s reported that he’s about to tax people with gas boilers to pay for people with heat pumps. So, can he definitively rule out for the rest of this Parliament no new taxes on people heating their homes?”
The Times last month reported that ministers had considered a £30 levy on gas bills to lower the cost of electricity, but would prevent overall gas bills from rising by scrapping a green levy elsewhere.
“I can absolutely rule out that we’re going to introduce new levies into the energy system in the warm homes plan – absolutely,” Mr Miliband replied. “These reports are complete nonsense.
“And I can tell her what we are going to do in the warm homes plan, and that is to turn the page on a decade of their failure, because we’re going to invest where they didn’t.
“We have a plan where they didn’t. We’ll have proper oversight and regulation where they didn’t, and we will tackle the cost-of-living crisis they caused.”
In a follow-up question, Ms Coutinho said “the rumours are he’s pitching himself” to replace Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
She continued: “He didn’t rule out taxes on people heating their homes for this Parliament – he’s shutting down the North Sea, a disastrous EU energy deal, a secret deal with China, industry fleeing in its droves.”
Responding, Mr Miliband told MPs: “We will be investing in the warm homes plan which will come soon – £15 billion of public investment to help people cut their bills. Now, they can oppose it if they like, but I think this will be supported across the country, because they were an absolute failure on energy efficiency and all of that, and we’re going to succeed.”