Now that ministers are nearing a deal on those green taxes and levies, they are also trying to highlight their efforts to improve the energy market in general. Privately there were a number of Conservative MPs of a similar persuasion to John Major who I spoke to last week who sympathised with the former Prime Minister’s windfall tax proposal. They argued that the energy companies are benefitting from a broken market, and this tax would simply be a tax on the extra benefits of that broken market. But Greg Barker this morning argued that it would damage investment. He told ITV’s Daybreak:
‘We think we need to balance the demands of consumers with also investment and the best way to do that is more transparency, more openness and also bearing down on the costs that are discretionary – some of which the Government has control over. We want it to be fair, but ultimately it’s big competition that’s going to get a better deal.’
The Big Six energy companies are up before the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee tomorrow afternoon, and as well as wanting to appear as cross as they possibly can for an angry post-match press release to their local paper, the MPs on the committee will want to grill those companies on how they benefit from the market set up as it is.
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