Boris Johnson told to tackle rising energy bills to avoid ‘extreme suffering’ this winter
Boris Johnson should intervene urgently to start insulating British homes and introduce fiscal policies to reduce bills, as further delay will mean more people face “extreme suffering” this winter as energy bills soar, a former government chief scientific adviser has warned.
David King said: “This could be the worst possible time for the leadership of this country to be simply sitting back. We’re waiting until what? We have an energy crisis right now and we need good leadership. We need alert leadership, leadership that is thinking about this – and that is missing.”
Johnson, who has vowed to take no major decisions in his remaining time in office, attended a meeting of energy companies last week that had no conclusive outcome, and is now on his second holiday since resigning last month.
King told the Guardian: “He is the prime minster. He wanted to stay on, so he must deliver as prime minister. There is no one else who can do that.”
He called for higher taxes on energy companies, which he said were riding soaring energy prices since the Ukraine invasion for a bonanza, rather than investing or becoming more efficient. “They are taking bigger and bigger profits, as the prices are so high. That can only mean that they are tying their profits to the price, not the volume they are delivering,” he said.
King – a former government chief scientist and UK climate envoy from 2000 to 2007, and as the government’s special representative on climate from 2013 to 2017 he was an adviser to prime ministers and foreign secretaries including Johnson – said valuable time had been wasted while the government failed to act.
Waiting several more weeks for a new Conservative leader to take the reins of government would only add to the problem, he
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