Green threats

Ofgem, in a recent report, commented on a fairly recent rapid rise in fuel prices confronting consumers. It seems that a consequence has been an even more rapid rise in the number of houses disconnected from their energy supplies. This is quite apart from the large number of elderly pensioners who risk dying because they are trying to economise by reducing their heating.

This is a sad state of affairs. The old age pension, even backed up with means-tested benefits, does not provide much protection from fuel bill and council tax rises. It is much less than the minimum wage level, but even so may lead some to pay income tax. While the present Government may claim all sorts of achievements, the evidence on pensions is shameful. Pensions were never adequate, and they have increased at the miserly CPI inflation rate for several years, when the real level, something like the older RPI has been increasing more rapidly. Indeed, experts have calculated that prices faced by pensioners, and which take much of their income, have gone up by over 5% in several years and once or twice by as much as 8%.

With pensions rising by 2% and relevant prices rising by 5%, pensioners have been impoverished.

But there is another twist. Energy companies point out that about 50% of the fuel price rises are the result of higher costs imposed by the Treasury, and especially so-called green taxes.

There is a logic to the green taxes that many would want to agree with, - they encourage us to conserve scarce resources or encourage us to reduce the use of goods which cause harm to the environment.

The problem is that the Blair Government rushed through these taxes in a very dramatic way, without consulting industry and without considering the social consequences.

For those on very low incomes the energy taxes reach them, as it does everybody, in high prices passed on by producers.

It is difficult to see pensions and benefits being given a boost in a time of financial stringency like the present, and it is difficult to see how the poorest could be exempt from the effect of the taxes. The worrying thing is that experts have calculated that recent proposals on the environment by the EU will add at least a further 15% to electricity bills.

If we do not wish to see the growing elderly population dying earlier because of poverty, then there must be a concentration on them and other poorer people, either in aid to reduce their energy consumption, or in their incomes, or both.