Call to cut energy prices for Lambeth residents
Chuka Umunna, Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Streatham, and Kate Hoey, Labour MP for Vauxhall, call for energy companies to pass on the fall in energy costs to local people or face a windfall tax.
The average annual spend on domestic energy per household has now breached £1,200. Since 2000, consumers in Lambeth and beyond have faced gas price rises of 100% and electricity price rises of 61%. Every 10% increase in energy prices leads to an extra 400,000 people joining the 2.5 million already living in fuel poverty in Britain today. At the same time, the main energy providers have seen their profits rise from £557million in 2003 to over £5billion now.
Ahead of the debate this week in Parliament on energy prices and fuel poverty, Chuka Umunna, Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Streatham, Kate Hoey, Labour MP for Vauxhall (left), and others wrote in a letter to The Observer newspaper on 14 December 2008:
“We are gravely concerned at the behaviour of energy companies who are refusing to pass on price cuts to consumers, in spite of the sharp falls in the world price of crude oil.
“The record price rises coupled with the refusal of companies to pass on cost cuts could increase those in fuel poverty beyond six million.
“We urge government to introduce a new windfall tax if these companies continue to refuse to pass on their cost cuts to consumers. Revenues from any windfall tax should be targeted at homes in fuel poverty to give them immediate help and should also be used to start a programme of home insulation to protect people from future price rises.”
Commenting further, Umunna, who organised for Energy Secretary Ed Miliband MP (right) to meet with local community groups in June 2008, said:
“People living in communities like ours, containing some of the most deprived wards in the country, have struggled to cope in the face of price hikes – it is outrageous that these companies are now refusing to pass on the price cuts resulting from the drop in the price of world oil.”
Hoey is also supporting an Early Day Motion (EDM) submitted for debate in the House of Commons on the issue. The EDM, tabled on Thursday 11 December by Fabian Hamilton MP, calls on the government to actively intervene to force companies to reduce consumers energy bills and to then implement a windfall tax if they refuse to do so. So far 27 MPs have signed up to the EDM and the number of signatories is growing.
