Conservative MP and ex minister calls for ‘urgent action’ over energy bills

Conservative MP Robert Halfon has demanded “urgent action” from the government over soaring energy bills.

The MP for Harrow who served in Cabinets under Theresa May and David Cameron respectively expressed his concern that  “ordinary folk are set to be £1200 worse off next year” in a column for the Sun newspaper this morning.

Writing this morning, he described the pandemic as “a hammer blow to the cost of ­living”.

“Seeing bill after bill dropping through their letterbox, up, up, up. Council tax, utility costs, National Insurance, all increasing. Coronavirus has been a disease of inequality,” he went on.

He said “urgent action” was needed given that energy bills could rise to £2000 this year.

“Given these sky-high bills, it is crazy that 25 per cent of our electricity costs goes on an energy tax known as the Green Levy. Two and a half per cent is added to the cost of gas,” he argued.

His remarks come after 20 Conservative MPs and peers demanded in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph that the government slash VAT on energy bills and remove the green levy to reduce pressures on consumers as prices rise.

He complained that the environmental levy is “spent on some very questionable things — such as £1billion given to a power station in the North of England to burn imported wood chips — not what most people would call eco-friendly.”

“We all need to be more green and protect the environment. But you can’t ­balance environmentalism on the backs of working people struggling to pay their bills,” he wrote, re-affirming his stance that the levy ought to be scrapped.

The charity National Energy Action warned earlier this week that at least 2 million more homes could slip into fuel poverty compared with Spring 2021, meaning a record total of  6 million households would be categorised as such. 

“During the EU referendum campaign in May 2016, the PM and Michael Gove wrote in The Sun that when we left the EU, one advantage was that VAT on energy bills could be reduced,” Mr Halfon explained.