IT was heartbreaking to read the reports in yesterday’s Sun of people battered by spiralling costs.
But sadly they are all-too-familiar concerns as we face the worst cost-of-living crisis many of us have ever known.
Just the other day I was sitting in a cafe in my constituency, Harlow, chatting to the staff when one of them told me she was working SEVEN days a week just to make ends meet.
Without those extra hours she would not be able to pay her energy bills, she said. And, of course, that workload is not just affecting her finances — it is also damaging her quality of life because she cannot spend time with her family.
We are facing a tsunami of hard-working people unable to pay their bills — whether it is food, energy or other essential costs which keep rising and rising.
Tackling this issue has to be a priority for the Government. I welcome the measures they have taken so far — cutting fuel duty by 5p a litre, the £150 rebate on council tax for those in bands A to D, the increase in the living wage, the cut in the energy bills later in the year and the cut in National Insurance tax for 70 per cent of households.
But I’m afraid it is not enough. Even taking all that into account, people are still struggling in their millions, up and down the UK.
What clearly needs to happen is first for the Government to introduce a windfall tax on oil companies.
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BP and Shell alone are set to make £40billion of profits in 2022 and one oil boss’s salary almost doubled to £4.5million including £2.4million in bonuses.
The oil bosses are the new oligarchs. In short, they are making money they would not have made had the international wholesale price of fuel not gone through the roof.
And they are ripping us off at the petrol pumps when they refuse to cut petrol and diesel prices, even when the international price falls. So a windfall tax would be fair because the Government could redistribute that money to reduce the energy bills of the lower paid and the elderly.
I know there is resistance — especially from Conservatives. But it is not an un-Conservative thing to do. Two Tory Prime Ministers have followed that course.
Margaret Thatcher, not known as a Corbynista, introduced a windfall tax, as did David Cameron. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
The oil companies argue that a windfall tax will deter investment and affect jobs, but it rarely does. Even the head of BP commented that they have made their investments in the UK already and such a tax would not impact their commitments here.
We have to raise money from somewhere. It is not sustainable to keep adding to the national debt, which is costing taxpayers £70billion in interest alone on the £2.2trillion we owe.
The Government also needs to scrap green levies on energy bills. We can’t balance environmentalism on the backs of working people.
We have to raise money from somewhere. It is not sustainable to keep adding to the national debt, which is costing tax- payers £70billion in interest alone on the £2.2trillion we owe.
Robert Halfon
The Government slashed the overseas aid budget by £4billion and could redirect those funds towards cutting rising bills. Then, by finding savings in areas like these, the Chancellor should be able to cut income tax.
We need to raise the threshold at which working people start to pay this. Currently anyone earning less than £12,570 a year is not taxed on their income.
We have to increase this figure so that fewer people see money coming out of their wage packets each month. That way there is more cash to cover their bills.
With wages rising to keep up with inflation, the number of people benefiting from the current threshold will inevitably reduce and we need to be more nimble.
Those that oppose a cut in income tax argue that it also benefits higher earners, but there are relatively few rich people and it overwhelmingly benefits those people who are struggling. The tax burden is the highest it has been in 70 years and we need to reduce it.
The Government has to set up a cost-of-living commission so that every single domestic policy is assessed for its effect on household budgets. It will be similar to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
I am aware that some people in the party want to scrap the 1.25 percentage points rise in National Insurance, which came in last month. But there is an umbilical cord between my constituents and the NHS.
That £30billion extra from the health and social care levy is needed to cover the cost of the backlog in our hospitals caused by the pandemic, and to improve care services. And Harlow is not alone in this.
Bad practice
It is a fairer tax than many alternatives because 70 per cent of households won’t pay it.
There are other ways to tackle fuel bills. I agree with Fair Fuel UK that we should introduce a pump watch to make sure that when the global price of oil goes down, so does the price at the petrol station forecourt.
It currently takes ages for this to feed through and some petrol firms did not even pass on the 5p cut in fuel duty. We need a regulator to watch out for bad practice and to fine companies that are clearly exploiting drivers.
Planning for the future, our country needs to become more energy self-sufficient, because oil and gas prices are largely beyond our control.
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That, though, won’t immediately help hard-working Brits who are currently working every day and having very little to show for it.
Urgent action is needed, and it is needed NOW.
