Could Ed Miliband be a secret Tory, or even an undercover agent for Reform UK? Of course, the notion is absurd. The Energy Secretary is a paid-up socialist and Net Zero zealot.
And yet more than anyone in Labour – more even than Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves – he is doing his utmost to undermine his party’s already sagging fortunes with his headlong rush to impose Net Zero, irrespective of the harm it will inflict on the economy and therefore on people’s lives.
According to The Times, Miliband’s latest barmy idea is to make the country’s 25million owners of gas boilers pay an annual surcharge of £30 a year just for the privilege of owning them. We can be confident that the payment would increase yearly as long as Labour remains in power.
The measure is part of a £15billion ‘energy plan’ that actually has one or two potentially sensible ideas, such as the Government offering financial incentives to install solar panels on roofs. But the proposed annual levy on gas boilers is both crackpot and cruel.
Miliband wants to encourage more households to install heat pumps, which run on electricity. He aims to use the money snatched from boiler owners to bring down the price of electricity, although the effect would be marginal.
But the impact of this regressive tax on poorer people who own gas boilers would be significant. Think of the outrage that greeted Labour’s plan to abolish pensioners’ winter fuel allowance of between £100 and £300 a year. The Government was forced into a climbdown.
Many people would recoil at the monstrous injustice of being required to pay an annual surcharge for a boiler that they have already bought. Millions of the less well-off would be subsidising richer folk who can afford heat pumps.
The Government already offers heat pump grants of up to £7,500 under its boiler upgrade scheme. But those wanting to install a heat pump are likely to have to find at least £5,000 themselves, and much more for larger properties.
Green energy entrepreneur and Labour donor Dale Vince puts the figure higher. He told The Times: ‘It [Miliband’s levy] impacts the people that can least afford their bills, let alone dream of a heat pump. If you get a government grant for a heat pump, you will still have to find £7,000 yourself.’
Richer people would barely notice the annual £30 surcharge. They may also feel able to stump up the money for a heat pump – providing they can convince themselves that it will heat their properties efficiently. If they live in flats or houses without gardens they will struggle to find the space for a heat pump.
But, as Dale Vince points out, poorer people who can’t lay their hands on thousands of pounds will be permanently burdened with an annual tax that will offer a small benefit to those who can afford heat pumps.
It is amazing that Ed Miliband, who calls himself a socialist, should come up with such a blatantly inequitable idea – assuming reports are accurate. But then we know from history that doctrinaire socialists usually put ideology above the interests of the poor.
The Energy Secretary’s plan to boost the sale of heat pumps is in any case wrong-headed because they are expensive and often impractical. If he left it to the market, cheaper new alternatives to gas boilers, or possibly less expensive and more efficient heat pumps, would eventually emerge.
They haven’t yet. About 60,000 heat pumps were installed in the UK in 2025, which is a pinprick. Even with Miliband’s inducements it seems most unlikely that the Government’s target of 600,000 new heat pumps a year by 2028 will be reached. People are understandably wary of them.
Instead of imposing new levies that will bear down on the poor, Miliband should accept that gas boilers are for the foreseeable future likely to be the most efficient way of heating houses.
They would also be much cheaper if the Energy Secretary wasn’t doing his damnedest to kill off gas extraction in the North Sea by imposing swingeing taxes on producers and banning future exploration.
Norway has just proudly announced a string of North Sea oil and gas discoveries close to UK waters. Meanwhile British consumers are borne down by the second most expensive bills for household energy in the developed world.
The UK produces about one per cent of all global carbon emissions, and of these only 14 per cent are estimated to be caused by gas boilers. In the great scheme of things this is an infinitesimally small amount.
And yet the fanatic in charge of our energy policy thinks he is justified in unleashing an assault on the owners of gas boilers while killing off what remains of Britain’s gas and oil industry.
Let me give Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves some free advice. If you want Labour to plunge to new depths of unpopularity, let Ed Miliband go ahead with his madcap plan.
