Miliband Plots 15% Net Zero Tax on Gas Bills AND a ‘Family Bathtime Tax’ on Water Bills
Ed Miliband is hatching a plan to shift £4.8 billion in green levies from electricity to gas bills — a move that would push up the average gas bill by £120 a year to subsidise heat pumps. The Telegraph has the details.
Government ministers and Ofgem, the industry regulator, have spoken positively about the plans, which experts calculate would add 15% to the cost of gas. …
Officials are likely to argue that the average household, which uses a mix of gas and electricity, would face no increase in overall bills as a result.
That is because the levies would simply be shifted from their electric bill to their gas bill, with the cost balancing itself out overall.
Homes with heat pumps would benefit most, saving £420 a year, but families who are heavily reliant on gas boilers and cookers could end up worse off.
The Telegraph also reports that Labour is plotting a ‘family bathtime tax’ that would force those with larger family homes and gardens to pay more. Here’s an excerpt:
Some firms are also pushing for a move to a seasonal pricing system, which would mean it costs more to use water in the summer than the winter.
Combined, the changes would disproportionately hit the bills of families with children and of households with gardens and swimming pools.
The Tories said the “punitive” plans would hit young parents hardest, accusing Labour of allowing a “tax on bathtime” and “waging war on family homes”. …
Under the system, also known as rising block tariffs, the rate people are charged per litre increases at intervals in line with their usage. Such a system would have to be underpinned by the rollout of smart meters to all homes so that companies could monitor their water usage in real time.
Around 60% of homes in England are currently metered, but the vast majority of those have a conventional meter from which periodic readings are taken. The Government estimates that only 12% have smart meters, which are connected to the internet and provide data directly to the utility company. …
Thames Water, which last week was fined almost £123 million for breaking sewage spilling rules, is leading calls to introduce progressive charging.
The heavily indebted company, which recently saw its executives’ bonuses blocked by ministers, plans a “wider rollout” of the scheme from 2027. It is set to trial a three-tier tariff, as well as an “excessive” use surcharge, with the extra revenue used to subsidise the bills of the poorest families.
Thames Water has said the plans would reduce bills for three-quarters of households by an average of 9% and encourage lower usage.
But the Tories called them “class war in action” and said water charges were set to be used “as a means of social engineering”. …
Four water companies – Severn Trent, South West Water, Affinity Water and South Staffs Water – are currently trialling progressive tariffs or will do so shortly.
Anglian Water, meanwhile, is trialling two seasonal tariffs for residents of Norwich, Lincoln, Northampton and Colchester.
Ofwat said all companies would launch trials of new pricing structures by 2030. …
Under the current system metered homes pay a fixed annual levy, called a standing charge, and a flat fee per litre for the amount of water they use. Meanwhile, bills for unmetered homes are usually calculated either based on their rental value or a size-based assessment of how much water they use.
In both cases, larger families and homes with gardens and swimming pools already pay higher bills in direct correspondence to their heavier usage.
Under the proposed new system, those households would face a disproportionate increase in costs on the extra water they use.
Ah, the classic lie, most people would not see a change in cost with price switching from electric to gas. I am too polite to use an Anglo Saxon retort to this. Most people don’t have the ability to switch from gas to electric. All my heating is gas, most of my cooking is stove top gas, my water heats with gas for only one hour per day, so where pray tell, can I switch at no cost from gas to electric. Oh, of course, to benefit from this switch, I have to spend thousands to change to a heat pump don’t I. An investment that will never pay for itself.
I’ll cover it for you – it’s total bollocks, as you’d expect from millibrain.
Simply more smoke and mirrors to bend the system the way he ‘believes’ it should be.
Reform – please jump 100% on the crap and call it out very clearly to everyone, demand labour explain themselves?
As for water – what could possibly go wrong, more billions to be spent on smart meters and all the disruption their installation will take… labour see this as all good value adding work
Heat pumps are air-conditioning units which operate in reverse. Office blocks, for example, have huge air-con units on the roof – fans and compressors – with slave heat exchanger units in each office.
So theoretically it would be possible to install communal heat pump system to a block of flats – but practical? It would involve installing pipework, units in each room in each flat and of course as well as the main external unit. It would be costly. But no matter, Mad Ed Minibrain will have the solution and subsidies.
Or in residential areas where all electricity supplies are capacity limited. Not only will they not be able to support air source heat pumps but nor EVs.
There are also us hicks out in the rural boondocks who heat our homes with oil and wood, where do we sit in this debate? Do any of these energy subsidies, levies etc. have any impact on the price of of oil and wood?
I sometimes wonder if all the attacks on wood-burners are more because it is a fuel outside their control rather than any concerns about wood smoke.
I am just about to move to a village that does not have gas. So I need to use oil. I am going against the plan of the 15 min cities. But I don’t care. Making sure you have enough oil sounds fun!
At least once you have bought your oil and filled up your tank, the oil is yours.
A small backup power supply would also run your pump in case of a mains electricity power outage.
Oil heating will become a more attractive option than gas given that heat pumps mainly fail to heat homes and will likely cost more than any saving on tax reduction.
Our Civil Servants and their Client Labour Party are incapable of recognising areas outside cities conurbations and large towns. It’s the equivalent of the Middle Ages approach to unexplored oceans …. “There be Monsters.”
What an unbelievable statement proving how utterly demonic this government has become.
We haven’t built a reservoir in forty years but these treasonous marxists intend to penalise basic hygiene.
FFS !
Ardandearg
10 months ago
I do not understand why new and indeed existing houses, where appropriate, do not incorporate underwater tanks to collect rainwater which can be used in the central heating system, to flush toilets, water the garden, wash the car etc. When we lived in Belgium they had been the norm for many years. One could change from mains water to stored rainwater at the flick of a switch. The tanks require annual cleaning, but are an excellent way of saving tapwater.
Apart from geological conditions and extra cost – we have a housing crisis because people can’t afford houses currently being built which are like rabbit-hutches to keep costs down – but these tanks would be collecting water which otherwise would refill aquifers, watercourses, and replenish water company reservoirs, or flush sewers.
Note: all water that falls from the sky legally belongs to the water company.
Clearly the reason we haven’t built any reservoirs in forty years is because water shortages are part of their planning. Which proves how long this enterprise has been ongoing.
Certainly “planning rules” and “environmental concerns” have made it impossible for water companies to increase capacity of their reserves to supply increasing demand.
“EU regulations do require careful consideration of environmental impacts when building new reservoirs, but they don’t prevent their construction ENTIRELY.”
In other words, it is virtually impossible …. and I would guess that is because our own Civil Service gold-plated the regulations and interpreted them as strictly as possible to prevent their construction.
Rather like they did to prevent dredging of the Somerset Levels.
Good idea but it would not work well where I live in Suffolk. My 3 rain water butts are dry for many weeks in the summer. They ran dry in April this year. We get so little rain. Even in the winter we don’t normally get huge amounts of rain.
I have been forced onto a smart water meter and told that they weren’t optional. My water bill this month rose from £40 to £69!
Aware of the radiation hazards from smart meters I have completely covered it with aluminium foil, in the hope it won’t give off any EMF radiation.
We have gone from a free market capitalist economy with pricing system which made everyone wealthier by developing technology, by innovation for better use of technology so as to match supply to demand as the latter increased.
Consumption is wealth. The more we consume the wealthier we become, the less, the poorer.
We now are in an era where ideology drives down supply and price is used to force us to consume less and get poorer. We must live our lives, change our lifestyles therefore to serve the State and the interests of arsewipes running it in order to serve their interests.
The reason why China is stuck in Export Mode is that the population can’t or won’t buy enough stuff. It looks like the UK is heading that way.
Jack the dog
10 months ago
Smart meters – so the bastards can switch off water supplies when their incompetence leads to shortages or else if you are not a favoured person under the regime.
My question on ‘smart’ water meters is how well to they work underwater? My water meter spends a lot of time under water during the winter as the water table rises. I guess they might force you to have it in the house and not out by the roadside.
According to the Severn Trent site, they fit in the same underground box as the current type. They must be, errr, waterproof to go in there. However, if they are underwater, they might fail to communicate by radio. I haven’t tried using a phone like that!
My smart meter is in the same underground box as the old one. Luckily it’s on the road and not too near the house. I’ve covered mine completely with aluminium foil. A Faraday bag would do well too. I’m not sure if they can read the meter now it’s covered up. Maybe they removed the foil. I’ll have to check.
Until this item came up, I didn’t realise there was any such thing as a “smart” water meter. I do, like almost all Thames Water customers, have one of their purely mechanical ones that need manual reading, usually by one of their employees a couple of times a year.
Bound to be places where they don’t work, if they use the same communication method as the electric/gas ones. Presumably they can generate enough to top up their little battery etc. I’ll explore this later, perhaps. Something else one can put on a modern phone, though. Looking at one of the water company ones, they can split it into one hour reads, potentially with variable pricing.
DiscoveredJoys
10 months ago
Labour – making it easier and easier to recreate ‘the great unwashed’.
The “climate emergency” is proving to be a highly valuable excuse for successive governments not only failing to provide the necessary infrastructure for the current population, but also straining existing infrastructure still further with massive influxes of new people. Diverting net zero money into securing borders and improving our water supply would be the sensible thing do – but the government has swallowed its own propaganda and can’t see this.
Only a dysfunctional market would lead to higher prices as you use more from a system where there are high fixed costs.
Any problem with water supply is due to inadequate reservoir capacity. Ever increasing population with very little increase in storage and no means of shifting water around the country has led to artificial shortages.
coviture2020
10 months ago
Impractical unnecessary and only for his own vanity’s sake. If death is why net zero is important then the cure is as bad as the disease.
Grim Ace
10 months ago
That man is a menace to the safety, security and wealth of our people. He should be arrested and put on trial for economic and social treason against our people.
He’s also not very bright.
The cost of the NET ZERO Eco Socialist SCAM—–1.4 TRILLION. —–These UN parasites are charging us fortunes for our own IMPOVERISHMENT
Simon
10 months ago
I’m not sure how seasonal water pricing could work because water meters are only read twice a year and being underground they can’t be smart meters like electricity, even if there was a power supply to the meter, and we all know water and electricity don’t mix.
They’ll likely work like the gas ones do, flow meter built in with long life 10+ year lithium battery / flash to store reading data. Could still be read by drive by personnel if need be
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Ah, the classic lie, most people would not see a change in cost with price switching from electric to gas. I am too polite to use an Anglo Saxon retort to this. Most people don’t have the ability to switch from gas to electric. All my heating is gas, most of my cooking is stove top gas, my water heats with gas for only one hour per day, so where pray tell, can I switch at no cost from gas to electric. Oh, of course, to benefit from this switch, I have to spend thousands to change to a heat pump don’t I. An investment that will never pay for itself.
I’ll cover it for you – it’s total bollocks, as you’d expect from millibrain.
Simply more smoke and mirrors to bend the system the way he ‘believes’ it should be.
Reform – please jump 100% on the crap and call it out very clearly to everyone, demand labour explain themselves?
As for water – what could possibly go wrong, more billions to be spent on smart meters and all the disruption their installation will take… labour see this as all good value adding work
Revenue neutral, never is.
Could somebody explain to me how heat pumps are going to be installed to flats that don’t have the space for them?
Like the magic money tree, there’s a magic space tree.
Heat pumps are air-conditioning units which operate in reverse. Office blocks, for example, have huge air-con units on the roof – fans and compressors – with slave heat exchanger units in each office.
So theoretically it would be possible to install communal heat pump system to a block of flats – but practical? It would involve installing pipework, units in each room in each flat and of course as well as the main external unit. It would be costly. But no matter, Mad Ed Minibrain will have the solution and subsidies.
As you said, it’s all possible with an unlimited supply of other people’s money
Or in residential areas where all electricity supplies are capacity limited. Not only will they not be able to support air source heat pumps but nor EVs.
Communal heat pump farms, comrade. Get with the national Labour socialist programme or its the Gulag for you.
There are also us hicks out in the rural boondocks who heat our homes with oil and wood, where do we sit in this debate? Do any of these energy subsidies, levies etc. have any impact on the price of of oil and wood?
I sometimes wonder if all the attacks on wood-burners are more because it is a fuel outside their control rather than any concerns about wood smoke.
Expect a heating oil tax.
We are in the same situation.
No mains gas.
Heating oil and wood burning stove.
I am just about to move to a village that does not have gas. So I need to use oil. I am going against the plan of the 15 min cities. But I don’t care. Making sure you have enough oil sounds fun!
Good luck.
At least once you have bought your oil and filled up your tank, the oil is yours.
A small backup power supply would also run your pump in case of a mains electricity power outage.
Oil heating will become a more attractive option than gas given that heat pumps mainly fail to heat homes and will likely cost more than any saving on tax reduction.
Our Civil Servants and their Client Labour Party are incapable of recognising areas outside cities conurbations and large towns. It’s the equivalent of the Middle Ages approach to unexplored oceans …. “There be Monsters.”
What an unbelievable statement proving how utterly demonic this government has become.
We haven’t built a reservoir in forty years but these treasonous marxists intend to penalise basic hygiene.
FFS !
I do not understand why new and indeed existing houses, where appropriate, do not incorporate underwater tanks to collect rainwater which can be used in the central heating system, to flush toilets, water the garden, wash the car etc. When we lived in Belgium they had been the norm for many years. One could change from mains water to stored rainwater at the flick of a switch. The tanks require annual cleaning, but are an excellent way of saving tapwater.
You do not understand?
Apart from geological conditions and extra cost – we have a housing crisis because people can’t afford houses currently being built which are like rabbit-hutches to keep costs down – but these tanks would be collecting water which otherwise would refill aquifers, watercourses, and replenish water company reservoirs, or flush sewers.
Note: all water that falls from the sky legally belongs to the water company.
And Belgium? Really?
Clearly the reason we haven’t built any reservoirs in forty years is because water shortages are part of their planning. Which proves how long this enterprise has been ongoing.
Just as well we have not seen a massive increase in the population, especially in the drier South East…..Oh, wait.
They don’t wash.
Certainly “planning rules” and “environmental concerns” have made it impossible for water companies to increase capacity of their reserves to supply increasing demand.
Exactly.
“EU regulations do require careful consideration of environmental impacts when building new reservoirs, but they don’t prevent their construction ENTIRELY.”
In other words, it is virtually impossible …. and I would guess that is because our own Civil Service gold-plated the regulations and interpreted them as strictly as possible to prevent their construction.
Rather like they did to prevent dredging of the Somerset Levels.
I am aware of at least three reservoirs which have been taken out of use that are local to me and which have been filled in over the last forty years.
Good idea but it would not work well where I live in Suffolk. My 3 rain water butts are dry for many weeks in the summer. They ran dry in April this year. We get so little rain. Even in the winter we don’t normally get huge amounts of rain.
I have been forced onto a smart water meter and told that they weren’t optional. My water bill this month rose from £40 to £69!
Aware of the radiation hazards from smart meters I have completely covered it with aluminium foil, in the hope it won’t give off any EMF radiation.
We have gone from a free market capitalist economy with pricing system which made everyone wealthier by developing technology, by innovation for better use of technology so as to match supply to demand as the latter increased.
Consumption is wealth. The more we consume the wealthier we become, the less, the poorer.
We now are in an era where ideology drives down supply and price is used to force us to consume less and get poorer. We must live our lives, change our lifestyles therefore to serve the State and the interests of arsewipes running it in order to serve their interests.
This cannot go on.
The reason why China is stuck in Export Mode is that the population can’t or won’t buy enough stuff. It looks like the UK is heading that way.
Smart meters – so the bastards can switch off water supplies when their incompetence leads to shortages or else if you are not a favoured person under the regime.
God what a horrendous dystopia they are making.
My question on ‘smart’ water meters is how well to they work underwater? My water meter spends a lot of time under water during the winter as the water table rises. I guess they might force you to have it in the house and not out by the roadside.
According to the Severn Trent site, they fit in the same underground box as the current type. They must be, errr, waterproof to go in there. However, if they are underwater, they might fail to communicate by radio. I haven’t tried using a phone like that!
My smart meter is in the same underground box as the old one. Luckily it’s on the road and not too near the house. I’ve covered mine completely with aluminium foil. A Faraday bag would do well too. I’m not sure if they can read the meter now it’s covered up. Maybe they removed the foil. I’ll have to check.
Net Zero Means Tax Tax Tax
Until this item came up, I didn’t realise there was any such thing as a “smart” water meter. I do, like almost all Thames Water customers, have one of their purely mechanical ones that need manual reading, usually by one of their employees a couple of times a year.
Bound to be places where they don’t work, if they use the same communication method as the electric/gas ones. Presumably they can generate enough to top up their little battery etc. I’ll explore this later, perhaps. Something else one can put on a modern phone, though. Looking at one of the water company ones, they can split it into one hour reads, potentially with variable pricing.
Labour – making it easier and easier to recreate ‘the great unwashed’.
😀😀😀
The “climate emergency” is proving to be a highly valuable excuse for successive governments not only failing to provide the necessary infrastructure for the current population, but also straining existing infrastructure still further with massive influxes of new people. Diverting net zero money into securing borders and improving our water supply would be the sensible thing do – but the government has swallowed its own propaganda and can’t see this.
Something stinks about this bathtime tax…
😀😀😀
Only a dysfunctional market would lead to higher prices as you use more from a system where there are high fixed costs.
Any problem with water supply is due to inadequate reservoir capacity. Ever increasing population with very little increase in storage and no means of shifting water around the country has led to artificial shortages.
Impractical unnecessary and only for his own vanity’s sake. If death is why net zero is important then the cure is as bad as the disease.
That man is a menace to the safety, security and wealth of our people. He should be arrested and put on trial for economic and social treason against our people.
He’s also not very bright.
More seats for Reform UK 🇬🇧 Thanks Ed 👏
The cost of the NET ZERO Eco Socialist SCAM—–1.4 TRILLION. —–These UN parasites are charging us fortunes for our own IMPOVERISHMENT
I’m not sure how seasonal water pricing could work because water meters are only read twice a year and being underground they can’t be smart meters like electricity, even if there was a power supply to the meter, and we all know water and electricity don’t mix.
They’ll likely work like the gas ones do, flow meter built in with long life 10+ year lithium battery / flash to store reading data. Could still be read by drive by personnel if need be
The lunatics really are running the asylum.