£1 billion worth of help announced over energy bills

With soaring energy usage prices making the energy crisis increasingly worse for the UK’s households the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has recently announced a measure that will see £1 billion spent on helping the poor and vulnerable to cope with rising energy costs and cut down on their energy bills.

The measures put forward by Brown will see around eleven million homes get free loft and cavity wall insulation over the coming few years, and many others get a grant for 50% of the cost. Also, arrangements have been made for over half a million of the poorest households to be put on lower cost social tariffs by the end of the year.

The funding is being largely shouldered by the big six energy companies, and this is in place of a windfall tax on their profits. Mr Brown said: “We looked at all possible options of both raising money and the action that we could take and that has been an inquiry that we had over the summer months. Instead of a windfall tax, this is the better way of moving forward.”

He added: “The special payments will be made, as a result of laws that we will pass in the House of Commons, by the energy suppliers. For the first time the energy generators will be paying as well as the distributors. The total amount of money raised will be £910 million. We want to keep energy bills as low as possible and I do not expect the £910 million that we raise to be passed on to the consumer by the energy companies. I think that’s a very important point to make.”