logo
Davey proposes major shake-up of green energy contracts to ‘slash bills'

Davey proposes major shake-up of green energy contracts to ‘slash bills'

The Liberal Democrat leader will call for a 'rapid' transition to Contracts for Difference (CfD), which work by guaranteeing generators a fixed 'strike price' for electricity regardless of the wholesale price.
CfDs are awarded by Government auction to firms bidding to produce renewable energy for the UK grid, with developers either paid a subsidy up to the strike price or repaying the surplus while the market price fluctuates.
In a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, Sir Ed will say that only 15% of green power is produced under such contracts, with the rest still coming from an old legacy scheme.
The 2002 Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROC) scheme, which does not involve a strike price guarantee, closed to new generation in 2017 but still governs some projects on contracts due to expire by 2037.
Sir Ed will argue that the ROC scheme was introduced 'when ministers didn't have the foresight to realise that renewable power would get so much cheaper over the next two decades'.
He will call on ministers to move all legacy agreements on to CfD, saying the transition would slash household energy bills by 'breaking the link' between gas prices and electricity costs.
The party leader is expected to say: 'People are currently paying too much for renewable energy.
'But not for the reasons Nigel Farage would have you believe.
'Because generating electricity from solar or wind is now significantly cheaper than gas – even when you factor in extra system costs for back-up power when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining.
'But people aren't seeing the benefit of cheap renewable power, because wholesale electricity prices are still tied to the price of gas.'
Sir Ed will add: 'Unlike Contracts for Difference, companies with ROCs get paid the wholesale price – in other words, the price of gas – with a subsidy on top.
'Subsidies paid through levies on our energy bills – costing a typical household around £90 a year.'
The Lib Dem leader will describe the legacy system as 'manifestly unfair' for consumers and call on the Government to 'start today a rapid process of moving all those old ROC renewable projects on to new Contracts for Difference.'
Taking aim at the Reform UK and Tory leaders, who have both expressed scepticism about the Government pledge to achieve net zero by 2050, Sir Ed will say: 'The narrative – seized upon by Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch – says the reason energy bills are so high is that we're investing too much in renewable power.
'And if we just stopped that investment – and relied more on oil and gas instead – bills would magically come down for everyone.
'The experience of record high gas prices in recent years shows that's not true… we know that tying ourselves ever more to fossil fuels would only benefit foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin – which is probably why Farage is so keen on it.
'But refusing to engage hasn't stopped his myths from spreading, from gaining traction in the new world of fake news. So we must change that.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

How realistic is Nigel Farage's promise to cut crime in half?
How realistic is Nigel Farage's promise to cut crime in half?

The Independent

time21 minutes ago

  • The Independent

How realistic is Nigel Farage's promise to cut crime in half?

N igel Farage claims that he has a plan to 'cut crime in half, take back control of our streets, [and] take back control of our courts and prisons '. The Reform leader says that 'we are facing nothing short of societal collapse', wants to build emergency 'Nightingale prisons ' on Ministry of Defence land, and has semi-promised to send convicted murderer Ian Huntley to El Salvador (admittedly a bit of a vote winner). It's an ambitious package, but there are questions about its viability... Is Britain facing societal collapse? No. If it was, you wouldn't get back alive from the pub or be able to get petrol or bread. Is crime up? On some measures and in some places, against certain given periods of time, it is up; on other measures, it's down. The variations in the way crime is measured are one issue – it's risky to go by the number of crimes recorded by the police, because people will sometimes not bother to report them, especially the less serious matters, so statisticians treat these figures with caution. The other way of measuring crime rates, which should also be adjusted for changes in population, is by conducting surveys among the public – but not everything is included. Somewhat confusingly, Farage seems to think that the survey data is unreliable because people have given up telling the police about, for example, thefts that might affect their insurance. That doesn't make sense. Types of crime also necessarily change over time; there are very few thefts of car radios or bank blags these days, but there's massively more cybercrime and fraud. Even in London, described by Farage as 'lawless', not all crime is up; there's a long-term trend down in murder and rape, for example, and there are still plenty of tourists. So fact-checking any politician on the subject of crime is virtually impossible. All such claims need to be treated with the utmost care. What about the costings? Farage presented a 'costings sheet' that purports to show that the whole massive package – recruiting 30,000 more police, opening new 'custody suites', restoring magistrates' court operations, building prisons, paying rent for offenders deported to prisons in El Salvador or Estonia, and the rest – would come to £17.4bn over a five-year parliament: a mere £3.48bn per annum. The costings seem to be optimistic, based on some arbitrary assumptions such as always being able to cut costs to a minimum. They are not independently audited by, say, the Institute for Fiscal Studies – and if it were really all so cheap to do, the Tories and Labour would surely have taken the opportunity to transform the crime scene and turn Britain into a paradise long ago. As for funding even the admitted £17.4bn, there are no specific named savings elsewhere, just some recycled claims about the (contested) cost of net zero and the supposed economic miracle wrought in Argentina by President Milei. Probably not enough to calm the bond markets under a Farage government. Is the UK 'close to civil disobedience on a vast scale'? So Farage claims. His critics say that his 'I predict a riot' remarks tend to have a self-fulfilling quality to them, as seen in the 'Farage riots' in Southport and elsewhere a year ago. Essex Police, who are currently dealing with violent unrest in Epping – perpetrated by 'a few bad eggs', as Farage terms it – won't thank him for his comments. And the anecdotes? Uncheckable, just as Enoch Powell's were in the infamous 'rivers of blood' speech in 1968. We may never know whether, for example, a former army sergeant was denied a job as a police officer because the force was 'having trouble with its quotas' or for some other reason. Reform's tactics are also reminiscent of the Trump playbook, demonstrating an obsession with incarceration and policing by fear. If Farage could build a British Alligator Alcatraz on a disused RAF base in Suffolk, he probably would. But using grass snakes, presumably. Can Farage cut crime in half in five years? It feels implausible. If he could, then presumably he could abolish crime altogether if he were given a decade in office. The 'zero tolerance' approach sounds fine, but if the pledge that every shoplifting offence, every whiff of a spliff, and every trackable mobile phone theft has to be investigated is taken literally – as he seems to intend – then even 30,000 more officers wouldn't be sufficient, and the expanded court and prison system would collapse. Much the same goes for 'saturation' levels of policing deployed on stop-and-search exercises in high-knife-crime areas. Sending many more people to jail is also very costly, but, more to the point, the recent Gauke report explains why prison doesn't work and just makes everything worse. To get crime down under Reform UK, we'd need to turn the UK into a police state.

Nigel Farage on UK crime: how do his statements stack up?
Nigel Farage on UK crime: how do his statements stack up?

The Guardian

time22 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Nigel Farage on UK crime: how do his statements stack up?

Nigel Farage has launched a six-week campaign and policy blitz, pledging to halve overall crime in the first five years of a Reform UK government. At a press conference on Monday, the Reform leader made a series of claims about crime levels in the UK and government efforts to lower them. In an article teeing up his proposals for the Daily Mail, Farage wrote that 'over the past 20 years, crime has become commonplace across Britain' and that ministers seemed to be spending money on 'everything except keeping the people of this country safe'. Here are some of his main claims and how they stack up. Crime has rocketed since the 1990s Farage's central argument is that crime has risen so much that the UK is 'facing societal collapse', while politicians are in complete denial. He wrote on Monday that total crime is 50% higher than it was in the 1990s. He told reporters that the crime survey for England and Wales was 'based on completely false data' and that 'if you look at police-recorded crime … there are some significant rises in crimes of all kinds, particularly crimes against the person'. He went on to argue that the true figures were even higher than the records showed, because 'most of us now don't even bother to report crime'. In fact, the Office for National Statistics regards the crime survey for England and Wales as the more accurate metric of long-term crime trends, because it includes incidents that haven't been reported to the police and is unaffected by changes in how crime is recorded. It is unclear what Farage's claim that it is based on 'completely false data' is founded on. The ONS also says police-recorded crime 'does not tend to be a good indicator of general trends in crime' and should only be used in conjunction with other data. ONS analysis of crime survey and police-recorded crime data concludes that crime against individuals and households has generally fallen over the last 10 years, with some important exceptions including sexual assault. There have been long-term decreases in violence with or without injury, theft offences and criminal damage since the mid-1990s. There are, however, some increases in the short-term. The latest survey shows a 33% increase in fraud last year, and a 50% increase in theft from the person compared with 2023. People in the UK no longer feel safe Farage claimed that 'people are scared of going to the shops' or 'to let their kids out' and that 'witnessing and experiencing crime has become normalised'. It's true that a significant proportion of British voters – 22% according to YouGov's poll tracker – regard crime as one of the biggest issues the country faces. Crime ranks behind the NHS, however, cited by 33% of people, and immigration and asylum, cited by 53%. One concrete data point Farage mentioned was that 57% of women felt it was unsafe to walk on the streets of London, which came from a Survation poll carried out this spring. Other parties don't care about crime Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Farage claimed to be 'astonished there's been so little debate in Westminster amongst all the political classes on this issue'. In fact Labour and the Conservatives put pledges on crime at the centre of their manifestos in the run-up to the July 2024 election, and both parties are spending a considerable amount of time debating and legislating in this area. One of the government's five driving 'missions' is to halve serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest level. London is lawless Farage made a series of claims about crime in London, including that tourists were increasingly reluctant to visit the capital and that wealthy people such as the oil magnate John Fredriksen were leaving. Fredriksen – a Norwegian-born Cypriot billionaire who is selling his £250m mansion in Chelsea – in fact cited Rachel Reeves' tax changes as the main reason behind his decision and said the UK was becoming too much like Norway. He has said nothing about crime. Farage also said one in three people in London had been subject to phone theft. This appears to have come from a survey of 1,000 people by a UK fintech start-up called Nuke From Orbit, rather than the police-reported figures that Farage said he preferred. According to the Metropolitan police, 80,000 phones were reported stolen in London in 2024, which suggests the crime affected far fewer than one in three people. The Reform UK leader did cite some official figures, including that shoplifting in London was up 54% last year compared with 2023, which came from the ONS.

Women facing ‘public safety crisis' as a result of immigration, Tories claim
Women facing ‘public safety crisis' as a result of immigration, Tories claim

Leader Live

timean hour ago

  • Leader Live

Women facing ‘public safety crisis' as a result of immigration, Tories claim

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp also said the public are 'rightly sick of this illegal immigrant crime wave', but added 'violent protests' are not justified. It comes after six people were arrested following a protest outside an Essex hotel believed to house asylum seekers. A series of protests have taken place outside the Bell Hotel in Epping since 38-year-old asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was charged with sexual assault after an incident where he is alleged to have attempted to kiss a 14-year-old girl. He denied the charge when he appeared at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on Thursday. Home Office minister Dame Diana Johnson said it is 'vital that the criminal justice procedures are able to run their course'. She added that the Government takes any allegation of sexual assault 'incredibly serious', and it is changing the law to ensure those convicted of sexual offence are not granted asylum. In an urgent question, Mr Philp claimed 'this year has been by far the worst ever' for immigration, with 23,000 migrants crossing the Channel so far. He added: 'Numbers in asylum hotels are now higher than at the time of the election. This is a border security crisis, but it is also a public safety crisis, especially for women and girls. 'Many nationalities crossing, for example, Afghans commit up to 20 times more sex offences than average. Louise Casey made that point in her report, and now we have press reporting on the huge scale of the crime committed by illegal immigrants housed in the Government's own asylum hotels.' Mr Philp continued: 'Those crimes included multiple cases of rape, sexual assault, violence, theft and arson, including the case in Epping she referred to where a 38-year-old Ethiopian man has been charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. 'An illegal immigrant in Oxford has been convicted of raping a 20-year-old woman in a churchyard. A Sudanese man was convicted of strangling and attempting to rape a woman in a nightclub toilet in Wakefield. 'Now violent protest in response to those appalling crimes is never justified. The public, though, are rightly sick of this illegal immigrant crime wave. It has to end.' He urged the minister to 'record and publish the immigration status of all offenders', and to close the hotel in Epping. Dame Diana replied: 'Any allegation of crime or sexual assault is incredibly serious, including by individuals in the asylum system, and it is to be treated so by the authorities and treated so by this Government.' She had earlier told the Commons: 'In the first year this Government has been in office, 5,179 foreign national criminals were removed from the UK – a 14% increase on the previous year. 'That is important progress, but we want to go further. We are changing the law in the Border Security Bill to ensure individuals convicted of any registered sexual offence are not granted asylum. 'We are legislating to allow for the tagging of any migrant considered to pose a threat to public safety or national security, as well as strengthening our crackdown on illegal working, but we must go further to end hotel use.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store