Lib Dems call for energy price cap increase to be scrapped

With a huge increase in the energy price cap looming later this year, the Liberal Democrats have put together a radically different, and better, package of support from the government’s plans.

The Liberal Democrat plan involves:

• Cancelling the planned October rise in the energy price cap, giving households across the country a £36 billion boost in dealing with the cost of living crisis.)
• Paying for this in part via a windfall tax, which fossil fuel companies will be able to afford thanks to their current huge profits. (BP and Shell alone made £29 billion in profits in the first six months of the year between them.) The rest of the cost would come from the boost in VAT revenues that higher inflation will bring the government.
• A four-pronged programme of extra help for the least well-off households, with reinstating and making permanent the £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift, helping nearly five million households; doubling the Warm Homes Discount and extending it to everyone on Universal Credit and Pension Credit, taking £300 a year off the heating bills of around 7.5 million vulnerable and low income households; doubling the Winter Fuel Allowance, giving up to £600 a year to 11.3 million elderly pensioners to help with their heating bills; and an emergency home insulation programme, starting with homes in or at risk of fuel poverty.

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

We are facing a catastrophe this winter, a drop in living standards unlike anything we have seen in my lifetime.

This is an emergency, and the government must step in now.

Energy bills have already gone up by £700 this year, and Conservative ministers have barely lifted a finger to help.

We simply cannot afford more inaction in the face of another even bigger rise in October.

You can read more about the plan in the coverage from the BBC and The Guardian.

UPDATE: The announcement has been getting a great set of media coverage, including…

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