Published: Monday, 20th October, 2008 12:00
Clegg blasts at 'immoral' energy bosses
By Adam Hewitt
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Nick Clegg with former Newbury MP David Rendel
ENERGY companies are raking in immoral profits from their poorest customers – that was the charge made by Nick Clegg in Reading at the weekend, as he called for tax cuts for low earners and a 2% cut in interest rates.
The Lib Dem leader, speaking at his party’s regional conference at Woodley’s Oakwood Centre before a public meeting at Reading Civic Centre on Saturday, declared: “It is immoral, it is wrong for the big six energy companies to have received, as they in effect have, a £9bn windfall subsidy through the complex mechanism by which carbon trading permits were handed to them for free.”
He called the Oakwood Centre “a magnificent building that is a considerable example of what Liberal Democrats have achieved for this community” and reflected on the busy year since the last time he was in the region, at a hustings in Newbury with then leadership rival Chris Huhne in October.
He spoke of the speedy rise of Barack Obama and the Cold War-style power politics being played out between Russia and Georgia, but said the biggest shift had been the faltering economy.
He said he had great faith in the Lib Dems’ economic team, including Treasury spokesman Vince Cable who has become an authority on the financial crisis thanks to his prescient warnings about the personal debt and housing bubbles over the past few years.
Mr Clegg said: “Fear is now stalking the land, stalking the world, and when the economy goes belly up it’s the poor who suffer the most.”
He accused energy companies of “dragging their feet” on installing smart meters which stop customers being overcharged for gas and electricity based on faulty estimates.
He added: “It’s downright wrong that people on low incomes pay more for the first units of energy they use, rather than the units they use later.
“It’s the poor, the elderly, the infirm who sit with one heater in a sitting room with the rest of the house stone cold – who use a fraction of what wealthy people do in larger, fully-heated homes – who get penalised more than anyone else.
“The Government should take action now with the energy regulator and just reverse it – let people pay less for the first units instead.”
He also stressed the importance of tax cuts for low and middle earners, a policy questioned by some commentators because Treasury coffers are already looking bare. But he said: “We can’t carry on in a time of recession with the injustice of our tax system in which low earners pay so much more as a proportion of their total income than people who are wealthy.”
He said interest rates should be cut further and that past recessions showed that when people on lower incomes get tax cuts they spend the extra money, helping to stimulate the economy. Higher earners instead choose to save or invest money saved when their taxes fall.
Later, at the public meeting at the Civic Centre in Reading, people questioned him on everything from road pricing to drugs. He also received a ceremonial sash and badge from Reading’s Gurkhas thanking him for his support in their successful campaign for home and pension rights.
He said: “The town hall meetings are just one way of keeping in touch with what people are thinking. Just to listen really, not persuade people to my point of view – though I might try to do that.”
Neal Brown, of Reading Lib Dems’ youth and student wing, said making energy companies charge less for the first units of power was “the right thing to do” and added: “It’s a common sense idea that would solve the problem for a lot of people.
“He was right on taxes too – we’re heading into a recession, and the way to stimulate the economy is tax cuts for low and middle earners.”
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Gaza protest in town centre