Minister rejects calls for windfall tax to fund new energy support package
8 September 2022, 09:42
Why aren't you making the energy companies pay more taxes?
Levelling Up Secretary Simon Clarke rejected calls for a windfall tax on the oil and gas companies to help fund the Government's emergency energy support package.
Mr Clarke told LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast: "These firms are the people we are going to be absolutely relying on to deliver that next generation of oil and gas extraction on the route to energy self-sufficiency.
"We need to go much, much further in getting new fields on line.
"That is why we need these companies to be ploughing that investment into the North Sea.
"We cannot do what Labour would do, which is just tax, tax, tax."
Households and businesses will find out later how the government plans to protect them from soaring gas prices.
The new Prime Minister Liz Truss is expected to tell MPs - domestic energy bills will be frozen at around £2,500 a year.
It's thought the package will cost up to £150bn, and be funded by increased borrowing.
You are going to burden the tax payer for years to come
Liz Truss's refusal to levy a windfall tax on energy companies' excess profits has been made "purely on the basis of dogma", Ed Miliband has said.
The shadow climate change secretary said that it was "bogus" to suggest a windfall tax would damage investment in the energy industry.
"This investment argument is completely bogus; that it would have a damaging effect on business," he said.
"Bernard Looney, the chief executive of BP, says it wouldn't have a damaging effect.
"This is a dogma, and I'm afraid we see a pattern here. This is a shift to the right by the Conservative Party under Liz Truss. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak actually eventually ended up agreeing with our idea of a windfall tax.
"Now we have a government that is setting its face against it purely on the basis of dogma."
