Nuclear Free Local Authorities call on Prime Minister Truss to tax profiteering energy companies to reduce bills and insulate cold homes
Posted: 8th September 2022
NFLA call on Prime Minister Truss to tax profiteering energy companies to reduce bills and insulate cold homes
Such is the seriousness of the energy crisis gripping Britain that the Nuclear Free Local Authorities have not wasted a single day before writing to newly-appointed Prime Minister Liz Truss urging her to use her ‘first few days’ to take action.
Councillor David Blackburn, Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee, has called on the Prime Minister to force energy companies to introduce cost-only tariffs, without profit, at this critical time and he wants to see a proper Windfall Tax on the excess profits of businesses engaged at all layers of the energy industry, whether in the extraction of oil and gas; the generation of electricity; the transmission of gas and electricity; or in supplying customers.
The NFLA is critical of the Excess Profits Levy introduced in response to public and opposition demands earlier this year; it is limited only to gas and oil companies, and any obligation to pay it can be reduced or nullified by the company reinvesting in further extraction, increasing further national dependence on fossil fuels for energy and further poisoning our environment.
Instead, the NFLA wants to see excess profiteering curbed and a comprehensive Windfall Tax applied to previous excess profits to raise billions to offset bills, particularly for the elderly, sick and disabled, parents with young families and low income and claimant households, and to pay to an emergency programme to retrofit insulation and energy efficiency measures in Britain’s coldest and dampest homes.
Councillor Blackburn is quite clear about the consequences of any failure by Prime Minister Truss to step up and show leadership
“Many people will die. As we move into autumn and then winter, with longer nights and cold weather, more and more Britons faced by energy bills, which seem to be rising inexorably, will have to make a stark choice – to eat or to heat – and in some will have no choice at all – having insufficient income to do either.
“Without urgent action, the consequences will be an excess of winter deaths and a huge rise in ill-health as our poorer citizens shiver and die in cold and damp homes.
“Instead of tax cuts which will only benefit the rich let’s instead use the money to lower everyone’s bills and to accelerate the emergency retrofitting programme. And let’s abandon RAB which will increase everyone’s bills to pay the price of the failure of new nuclear.
“These are objectives the whole nation can get behind – a UK wide effort to ensure everyone has access to affordable warmth in a dry, warm home”
This media release can also be found on the NFLA website at
For more information, please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email on [email protected] or telephone 07583 097793
Ends/…
Notes to Editors
The letter to Liz Truss reads:
The Rt Hon. Liz Truss MP Wednesday 7th September 2022
Prime Minister
C/o The Cabinet Office
Dear Prime Minister,
Congratulations upon your recent election as Leader of the Conservative Party and upon your appointment today as Prime Minister by Her Majesty the Queen.
You rise to the highest elected office at a time when Britain is in the grip of an energy crisis and also faces the challenge of climate change.
As autumn beckons, nights draw in and temperatures drop, energy generators and suppliers are seen by the public as greedy profiteers using the tragedy of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and any other excuse to hike prices and squeeze every last penny from our financially pressed electricity and gas consumers.
In the face of this relentless assault, many Britons faced by energy bills, which seem to be rising inexorably, will be faced with stark choices – either to eat or to heat – and some will have no choice at all – having insufficient income to do either.
Without urgent action, the consequences will be an excess of winter deaths and a huge rise in ill-health as poorer Britons shiver in cold and damp homes.
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities urge you in your first few days in office to
Use your influence to persuade, or pass emergency legislation to require, energy companies to curb their profits by applying cost-price only tariffs during this time of crisis.
Apply a Windfall Tax upon the excessive profits of all energy companies, whether engaged in extraction, generation, transmission or supply.
The Energy Profits Levy introduced earlier this year was deficit in that it applied only to oil and gas companies engaged in extraction, and it was caveated such that it provided near total tax relief where such companies reinvested profit into enhanced production.
The application of a Windfall Tax on the excess profits of energy companies at all levels should fund:
- Financial support for lower income households and for those of our most vulnerable citizens (the elderly, the sick and disabled, parents with babies and young children, and claimants in receipt of means-tested benefits, including those working who are also receiving Universal Credit).
- An emergency programme to retrofit insulation and energy efficiency measures to Britain’s coldest, dampest and least energy efficient homes, making them warmer, weather-proof and cheaper to heat. Such a programme would create many entry-level jobs accessible to many of those who would be beneficiaries, and it would help galvanise collective action in a nation at this most difficult time.
Expanding on our call for an emergency programme to retrofit insulation and energy reduction measures in Britain’s cold and damp homes, in March, we wrote to your recent opponent in his role as Chancellor.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak appeared to do nothing – Prime Minister, here is your chance!
In our letter we said:
‘A programme of insulation would not only mean our homes would become warmer and less draughty, but it will mean less energy is needed to heat them so reducing consumer fuel bills, energy consumption, and our dependence on foreign-sourced gas, which is good for our pockets, good for our environment, and good for our energy sovereignty.
Other benefits would include improvements in public health, as warmer homes mean healthier people, so reducing demands on our overburdened National Health Service, and the creation of many new jobs carrying out this socially valuable work, which could be targeted at those disadvantaged in the labour market and those who find themselves out of work following the Covid pandemic.
In its report, ‘Homes for Heroes: solving the energy efficiency crisis in England’s interwar suburbs’ [i], the RIBA calls for a national programme of public works, costing up to £38 billion, to improve the insulation of England’s 3.3 million interwar homes, those properties first built for our nation’s First World War veterans.
Energy use in homes accounts for about 14% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Only 10% of interwar homes achieve an energy performance certificate above band C and almost a fifth of households in interwar homes live with fuel poverty (17%).
According to the RIBA, if current band D rated homes were retrofitted to achieve a band C performance, households would save £511 a year under the proposed 2022 energy price cap. Such a programme would also mean a cut in our carbon emissions that the RIBA has calculated could be 4%, easing us towards our 2050 net zero target.
The independent Climate Change Committee, chaired by your Conservative colleague and former environment secretary, Lord Gummer, believes that the UK will need to spend £55bn on improving efficiency in existing homes by 2050, but interestingly CCC research reveals that 63% of homes require no more than £1,000 spent on retrofitting energy efficiency measures[ii].
Yes £38 or 55 billion is indeed a lot of public money, but you have found hundreds of billions to respond to the Covid pandemic, and millions of Britons shivering in cold and draughty homes, whilst staring at an unpaid, unaffordable heating bill, also represents a national health crisis!’
Prime Minister, you have talked about your desire to reverse the recent National Insurance increase and to fund tax cuts for higher earners; these measures will have zero beneficial impact upon the financial circumstances of those who have no, or very little, earned income, and will only benefit the already better off in society and be seen by many as both gratuitous and perversely unjust! If there is indeed money ‘spare’, we suggest if should be used to reduce energy bills to benefit everyone across the board and to support the acceleration of the insulation programme.
Finally, you have also talked about your desire to remove ‘green levies’ yet you have made no similar promise to forego imposing the nuclear levy on customer bills resulting from the application of the Regulated Asset Base model when funding Sizewell C or any future nuclear power plant. If you are intent upon removing such levies, we believe it would be only fair to also abandon RAB. If renewables must be self-funded without subsidy then we believe that nuclear operators and investors should do the same, building new plants at their own risk, rather than expecting hard-pressed consumers to pay for them through a surcharge. RAB only de-risks projects for profit-focused nuclear operators and provides them with zero incentive to keep projects on time and within budget. The principal beneficiary would be EDF Energy, whose parent is wholly owned by the French state, a nation of whose friendship you recently seemed uncertain of.
I recognise that you will by incredibly busy, but I thank you for your consideration of this letter and look forward to receiving your reply. Please send your reply by email to the NFLA Secretary, Richard Outram, at [email protected]
Yours sincerely,
Councillor David Blackburn,
Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee