'We need a Chancellor with compassion for people’s plight, and the ambition to tackle it – both of which Rishi Sunak utterly lacked while delivering the Spring Statement.' ✍️ CarolineLucas writes for MetroOpinion
that will do nothing for almost half of those on the lowest incomes who have no car in the first place.By restricting it to a mere 3.1%, which was last October’s inflation rate, Sunak has directly made 9million of the poorest people around £500 worse off.People’s household bills will only continue to spiral if we don’t secure a stable energy supply, and fast.
To start with, they certainly won’t cut your bills – we are exposed to the wholesale gas price, and UK gas is sold on global markets, so it won’t make any material difference to prices here. Take simple, straightforward insulation – one study has shown that upgrading a home from Band D to Band C can cut gas demand by 20% per home, and save almost £200 per household in just one year.This was a matter of political choices for the Chancellor – while pushing those on the lowest incomes into ever deeper poverty, he completely bypassed the opportunity to tax fossil fuel giants on their obscene profits.
Yet the UK received less than $2 per barrel of oil in tax in 2019, in comparison to nearly $22 per barrel in oil-rich Norway.