Scots reaching boiling point on gas bills
by Colin Fox, 08-07-2011
Anger is growing steadily across Scotland at the crippling price of gas and electricity after the country’s biggest supplier Scottish Power announced a 19 per cent increase in charges.
From 1 August 2.4 million customers across the UK will see their average bill for gas and electricity combined reach £1,500 a year. Scottish Power blames the rise on the increasing cost of oil and gas on world markets.
Whilst energy costs have soared in recent years wages, benefits and pensions have not. This is what is fuelling the anger, people simply do not have the money to pay more and more and more for such necessities.
Scottish Power’s announcement comes just as the SNP Government at Holyrood and the ConDem Coalition at Westminster are cutting programmes designed to counteract fuel poverty.
Holyrood Housing Minister Alex Neil has cut £20million from fuel poverty initiatives [£70.9million last year, £48million this year] and abandoned the SNP’s commitment to eradicate fuel poverty in Scotland by 2015. At the same time Tory Chancellor George Osborne has reduced the vital winter fuel payment to pensioners by up to £100.
The social consequences of this ‘double whammy’ of rising prices and falling public support are entirely predictable.
The Scottish Government admits there are now one million families in Scotland living in ‘fuel poverty’ [paying more than 10 per cent of their income on power bills].
The situation is now so grave that tens of thousands of households are in a new category of ‘extreme fuel poverty’ i.e. paying more than 20 per cent of incomes on heat and light!
The number of ‘cold related deaths’ among the elderly and disabled has reached near record levels [Source : NHS Scotland].
Poorer areas of the country are especially hard hit. In Dumfries and Galloway for example the Council estimates 26,500 families in the region are afflicted by fuel poverty. At 41 per cent of households this
compares badly with a Scottish average of 28 per cent. Local Councillor Alistair Geddes describes the situation as ‘appalling’ and ‘wholly unacceptable’ and has called for a national campaign to mobilise public opinion against the power companies and pressures elected representatives to intervene.
And there is little point taking your custom elsewhere as the other five energy companies [Scottish and Southern Electric, Eon, NPower, EDF and British Gas] are widely expected to follow suit and announce similar rises.
Scottish Socialist Party members in Edinburgh have been campaigning on the issue and have condemned Scottish Power for this latest unacceptable increase. We have called on Alex Salmond to intervene and to use the overwhelming mandate he received in May on behalf of customers.
OFGEM, the industry regulator, has the power to stop these rises. As SSP National spokesman I have written to the First Minister suggesting it is time gas and electricity bills were capped and urging him to make greater effort to lift people out of fuel poverty.
The current situation makes a mockery of his 2007 election promise to end fuel poverty by 2015. There are 50 per cent more people in that situation now as there were when Alex Salmond came to power.
Shelter Scotland, the housing charity, reports that families living in poorly insulated homes are among the worst affected as heat escapes through badly insulated walls, windows, doors and roofs. They want the Government to build 100,000 new fuel-efficient council houses to reduce energy bills and tackle homelessness.
The UK Government introduced the winter fuel allowance in 2000 in recognition of the fact that pensioners were unable to find the sums demanded by the power companies. But the £200 initially granted has been quickly swallowed up in subsequent rises. In order to keep up with later increases they now need to be doubled to £500 and £800 [for the over 80’s].
Similarly for customers on pre payment cards - currently the most expensive way to purchase electricity and gas it would be fairer if this method of paying for fuel attracted a discount instead of a premium as it is poorer families who use them most.
Of course the solution to the problem of rocketing gas and electricity bills in the medium and long term has to be greater investment in renewable energy. Scotland needs to diversify away from oil and gas to cheaper, cleaner and more reliable forms of energy. Alex Salmond talks a good game on renewable energy but the results so far are frankly negligible.
The SSP fully supports eradicating fuel poverty in Scotland by 2015.
But it involves much more commitment from Governments in Edinburgh and London and substantially more meaningful investment in renewable energy and diversifying away from expensive gas and oil.
Such a programme must also include bringing the power companies back into public ownership to ensure the profits generated benefit everyone of us not just rich shareholders. Scottish Power’s parent company Iberderola made £3billion in profits last year.