LAST week’s announced gas price hike will be a hammer blow to families across Scotland. So many communities were already struggling from the long-term impacts of the pandemic, and this will make it even harder.
Times were already tough for a lot of households, but over the last few months we have seen cuts to Universal Credit and furlough support, a regressive national insurance rise that disproportionately hits people on low incomes and now a 50% rise in the cost of gas tariffs.
In the Highlands, which is part of the region I represent, one-third of all households are already experiencing fuel poverty, with one-fifth living in extreme fuel poverty.
READ MORE: Millions of Scots to get cash boost as Kate Forbes announces cost-of-living aid
The “fuel poverty gap” is the additional income which would be needed to bring a household to the point of not being fuel poor. Overall, the average fuel poverty gap for households that were fuel poor in 2019 was £216. However, the average fuel poverty gap for fuel poor households in rural areas was £585. The gap will only have grown since then.
These aren’t abstract numbers. Behind every one of them is a real household or family who are struggling and who may have to make difficult decisions or cut back on essentials. The choice between heating and eating is a real one for far too many, and there are no guarantees that prices will stabilise in the years ahead.
If things continue as they are then the cost-of-living crisis will only get worse. It is not only gas prices that are increasing, but also the cost of clothes, food and petrol. Anyone who has been shopping over the last few months will have seen prices creeping up.
At the same time, real wages have effectively flatlined, with the Bank of England warning that we face at least another year of spiralling costs.
It doesn’t need to be this way. Scotland is a wealthy country, and everybody should be able to live comfortably in a warm home without having to worry that they are about to have the rug pulled out from under them.
As we emerge from the pandemic, we need to do things differently. That means a national conversation about what we want Scotland to look like and who it should work for.
There is a responsibility on all governments to act. With the doubling of child payments to £20 a week, and provision of free bus travel for everyone aged 21 or under, I am glad that we are taking big steps to relieve poverty and lower the cost of living here in Scotland.
Our Parliament is at its best when parties work together to form lasting solutions. It is a tribute to the work of successive Scottish parliaments that we have managed to maintain free prescriptions and access to higher education and a time when costs have skyrocketed in other parts of the UK.
Unfortunately, many of the biggest changes can only be addressed from Downing Street. It is only Boris Johnson and his colleagues who can undo the years of cuts to social security and tackle the obscene energy price increases that we are seeing.
In the short term, the UK Government must take action to help people suffering in fuel poverty, whether this means giving funding directly to people or working with energy companies to reduce bills. It also means introducing a windfall tax to ensure that the eye-watering profits announced this week by fossil fuel giants are used and reinvested to help people who are struggling rather than lining the pockets of shareholders.
Unfortunately, the solutions that the UK Government has announced do not go anywhere near far enough to address the fuel poverty crisis. The plan to effectively loan £200 and call it a rebate while increasing future bills until it is paid off will do little if anything to help.
What’s even more alarming is that there is no serious talk about how to stop the same kind of rise from happening again in the years ahead. On the contrary, Boris Johnson and his colleagues have committed to expanding roads and aviation and are in the process of commissioning new oil fields in the North Sea.
We can’t continue like this. In Scotland we are working to ensure that retrofitting is prioritised and rolled out across the country. This doesn’t need to cost the earth and will lead to warmer homes and lower bills.
With Greens in government, we are accelerating plans to lower bills by making homes more efficient and heating them via renewable alternatives like heat pumps rather than fossil fuels. To support this, we are investing an initial £1.8 billion in warm homes and good quality insulation.
Yesterday, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy, Kate Forbes, announced steps she is taking to offset the increased costs, including a £150 council tax discount for 1.8 million homes. By her own admission this does not go as far as the Scottish Government would like to. However, the current devolution settlement badly limits what can be done.
Looking to the future, our main goal must be to end our dependence on fossil fuels and break the link between fluctuating gas prices and household bills. That will require a just transition and a major investment in renewables.
Scotland can play a major role in securing a greener Europe. We have plans to double Scotland’s on-shore wind capacity by 2030 and to boost marine energy, but we need to make sure that the projects we are supporting are delivered in a way that has a strong community benefit.
Local people must be at the heart of the transition. A lot of people in the Highlands and Islands object to the ongoing injustice that means people in the region have to pay higher amounts to heat their homes when clean energy is produced en masse on their doorsteps.
The climate crisis and the cost of living crisis cannot be separated. They are the same crisis. And many of the solutions are the same. By reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and ensuring a just transition we can reduce our carbon footprint, keep money in people’s pockets and build the fairer and better future that so many are crying out for.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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