Government “negligently failing” on spiralling energy bills, Miliband says

Ed Miliband has criticised the government for “negligently failing” to act on rising energy bills and reiterated Labour’s call for a windfall tax on energy companies after BP reported its highest quarterly profits in more than a decade.

The energy company today announced that its profits had more than doubled in the first three months of the year to $6.2bn (£5bn). The company reported profits of $2.6bn for the same period last year.

The Shadow Climate Change and Net Zero Secretary said: “Yet again we see the oil and gas companies making billions upon billions of profits coming directly from the pockets of the British people and the government shamefully refuses to act.

“The oil and gas firms may be doing their job for the shareholders of their companies, but the government is negligently failing to do its job for the people of this country.

“The refusal to levy a windfall tax to help cut energy bills is deeply wrong, unfair, and tells you all you need to know about whose side this government is on – and it’s not the British people.

“A vote for Labour on Thursday is a vote to send the Conservatives a message they can’t ignore about why we need a windfall tax to provide real help to families facing an energy bills crisis.”

Chancellor Rishi Sunak last week suggested that he would consider introducing a windfall tax if energy companies failed to invest sufficiently in the UK and its energy security, adding: “Nothing is ever off the table in these things.”

But Boris Johnson told ITV’s Good Morning Britain viewers earlier today: “If you put a windfall tax on the energy companies, what that means is that you discourage them from making the investments that we want to see that will, in the end, keep energy prices lower for everybody.”

Keir Starmer reiterated today that Labour’s proposal would only target the excess profits of energy companies and would not impact investment in the industry. He told the BBC: “There needs to be investment for renewables. Of course we need a much stronger energy security strategy.

“But what we are talking about here is the profit that the companies didn’t expect to make. When their own chief executives and directors are saying ‘we have got more money than we know what to do with, we are effectively a cash machine’ then we are in the realms of taxing, a windfall tax, that money which they didn’t expect to make.

“So it doesn’t affect the ordinary investment that you would expect from the oil and gas companies. But choices have to be made when people can’t pay their bills.”

Labour first called on the government to introduce a windfall tax in January in response to the cost-of-living crisis. Rachel Reeves cited the “record profits” made by the companies as energy bills have risen sharply.

Announcing the proposal, the Shadow Chancellor said: “It is right to ask those who have benefited from higher gas and oil prices to pay more into the system.”

She added: “Chancellors have used this device before… when revenues and profits are particularly high. The previous Chancellor George Osborne did it in 2011. Gordon Brown and before him Margaret Thatcher, also, increased taxes for a short period of time on North Sea oil and gas.”