Kingston and Surbiton MP Ed Davey promised to fight “like a tiger” against government plans to cut green levies on energy bills.
Speaking to The Guardian last Friday, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary promised to resist Prime Minister David Cameron’s recently-expressed desire to cut green levies on energy bills.
Mr Davey said: “I am not going to give up on renewable energy. They are not going to touch it and I am not going to betray the fuel poor.”
Green levies are a tax that makes up around 4 per cent of the average family’s energy bill and are used to fund renewable energy programmes such as wind farms and the insulation of homes for poorer people.
Mr Davey said he was prepared to consider removing the levies if there was a guarantee these programmes would continue to be funded, perhaps through general taxation.
His other solution was to rising fuel prices is to make it easier for people to switch to a cheaper energy supplier, for example, he hinted that switching from British Gas to First Utility could save £250.
Energy prices have entered the political agenda through Ed Milliband’s promise of a price freeze if Labour were elected, a policy Davey rejects. If enacted, he said, any global price rise would bankrupt small suppliers.
Image Courtesy of Rex Features/Richard Saker
