The House Article | The next prime minister should tax wealth to bring down energy bills

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This week’s Ofgem price cap rise will add £221 on average to people’s annual energy bills. While communities are struggling and parliament is distracted, fossil fuel giants and privatised energy companies are cashing in. This is rip-off Britain.

I know this will be another huge blow in what has been a bruising year for anyone trying to keep up with constant price rises. For the three out of ten adults in the UK already either in debt to their energy company or worried about falling behind, and for the one in three households in my constituency, Gorton and Denton, that are living in fuel poverty.

Behind these statistics are people. Elderly people worrying about the cost of running a fan in the heatwave; families that spent the winter trying to make a game out of huddling together against the cold; and people with disabilities trying to run life-saving equipment all year round.

Before I became an MP, I was a plumber. I spent my days going into people’s homes, and so many times I saw the problem right in front of me. I remember walking into a house where the air was so thick with damp that you could almost slice through it. This was not an issue of ventilation, as some might suggest: it was a working family trying to provide for their kids and being unable to afford the basics—a warm home that is not full of damp.

Burnham must break the link between the international gas market and domestic bill

I recently celebrated my first 100 days as an MP, and this is the one issue that has come up pretty much every single day I’ve done the job. In Westminster, however, the main topic of conversation seems to be when and how the Labour Party is going to replace its leader.

In the first month after the US and Israel’s initial strikes on Iran, the share value of just five North Sea oil and gas companies was boosted by £73bn in one month. As I said when I was elected, working hard used to get people a decent life; now it is more likely to line the pockets of billionaires and energy giants.

This cannot continue. That is why the Green Party is calling on Andy Burnham, if he becomes the next prime minister, to take immediate steps to cut bills before the winter.

First, he could take £150 off everyone’s bills by removing policy costs and the cost of servicing energy debt from energy bills and funding them via general taxation. Funding policy commitments like the Warm Homes Discount should be done progressively, and that’s exactly what adding them to taxation would do. A wealth tax could ensure this was placed even more firmly on those with the broadest shoulders. 

If Burnham is really serious about changing course, then more must be done. He must break the link between the international gas market and domestic bills and go further to stamp out the profiteering in the energy market that allowed UK energy companies to make £30bn in pre-tax profits in 2024 alone.

He should also be looking to set out a fully funded and properly regulated local authority-led, national home insulation scheme, because, as I am painfully aware, our homes leak more heat than most places in Western Europe, and making people who are struggling pay for energy lost in seconds is appalling. 

He also needs to move further and faster on renewables. New fossil fuel extraction will not bring down bills or improve the UK’s energy security, but renewables can. Since the start of the war in Iran, wind and solar have saved the UK £1.7bn in gas imports. 

The public is clear that the affordability crisis is the issue that they want tackled. The next prime minister needs to act, and this time not in the interests of fossil fuel giants, but in the interests of the very people who trusted the government to make their lives more liveable.

Hannah Spencer MP is the Green Party MP for Gorton and Denton