Dear Constituent,
Thank you for contacting me about polluters and the climate.
While I understand your concerns around climate change, I do not believe that burdening industry with more taxes and regulations is the right course of action. Ultimately, it is families and businesses who pay these costs through higher energy bills, and deindustrialising our own economy to import more from major polluters such as China will do nothing to lower global carbon emissions.
In the UK, emissions from fossil fuels are already taxed through the Climate Change Levy (CCL). Oil and gas companies also pay additional carbon price support rates of the CCL on fossil fuels used to produce electricity. Oil and gas companies that operate in the UK are also taxed through the Energy Profits Levy (EPL), which was introduced by the last Government as a temporary tax when the oil and gas industry was making extraordinary profits after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, but has crippled the industry after oil and gas prices returned to normal levels.
The UK is responsible for only 1 per cent of global emissions, and oil and gas companies are some of the biggest investors in new green technologies. The UK will still need a strong oil and gas industry to provide a cheap, abundant supply of energy for decades to come, which will not leave us entirely dependent on costly foreign imports and intermittent renewables, and can provide the investment needed to make new technologies more affordable in the future.
I therefore believe the Government must back the future of the North Sea oil and gas industry by ending the ban on new oil and gas licences and scrapping the EPL. Furthermore, my colleagues in HM Opposition and I shall also continue calling on the Government to adopt the Opposition's Cheap Power Plan, which could reduce electricity bills by 20 per cent (the equivalent of £165 a year for the average family) by scrapping the carbon tax on electricity generation and ending subsidies for renewables.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.
Yours sincerely,
