DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Green levies will hurt struggling families

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Green levies will hurt struggling families

Beleaguered mortgage borrowers face being worse off by hundreds of pounds a month as rates spiral to their highest level since the disastrous mini-Budget.

Households are being stretched to the limit by the cost of living. And families are spending more each week than they receive as income, meaning they must dip into savings or load up credit cards to get by.

Rishi Sunak insists he understands the financial pain people are experiencing. In that case, it beggars belief that the Government plans to re-impose a £170 green levy on domestic energy bills to support the irresponsibly hasty shift to Net Zero.

These eco-taxes were introduced with reckless insouciance by Labour’s Ed Miliband in 2008 to subsidise uneconomic solar panels and wind farms.

But did this result in cheap, clean energy when the crisis started? No. As a result, voters will correctly ask exactly where the money has gone.

It beggars belief that the Government plans to re-impose a £170 green levy on domestic energy bills to support the irresponsibly hasty shift to Net Zero

In a rallying cry today, former Brexit minister Lord Frost will urge Mr Sunak to revive the Tories’ flagging fortunes by halting the rush to net zero – one of a series of proposals to win round voters.

The PM should take heed. If he persists in reinstating the green levy, hammering ordinary families at the worst possible time, it will prove he doesn’t actually recognise the hardship they are suffering.

Rather, it would suggest he does not fully appreciate the concerns of the public.

Come clean on parties

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, to attend one lockdown-busting party during the pandemic may be regarded as misfortune; to attend two looks like carelessness.

How unfortunate if such a biting observation applied today, in real life, to Tory peer Anne Jenkin.

Isn’t it bad enough that the baroness held a boozy Commons bash for her 65th birthday in December 2020 as the pandemic raged and indoor socialising was banned?

But now we learn that two weeks earlier she had hosted a ‘(socially distanced) party’ to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Women2Win political campaign group.

What makes this saga important is that Baroness Jenkin’s husband is Tory grandee Sir Bernard Jenkin, one of Boris Johnson’s chief Partygate inquisitors.

Of course, Sir Bernard is refusing to deny he broke Covid rules himself by attending his wife’s birthday. That reluctance to give a straight answer speaks volumes.

In the circumstances, Sir Bernard should have recused himself from the Privileges Committee, which hammered the final nail into Mr Johnson’s political coffin.

If he was guilty of a lockdown breach equivalent to his leader’s, how could he be impartial? The fact he stayed silent casts doubt on his integrity – and undermines the committee’s report.

The Met must surely investigate. As Sir Bernard piously said while on the committee: no one should be above the law.

A step nearer justice?

Three decades have passed since the savage murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence by a racist gang.

Yet the appalling failings in this inquiry, which saw the Met labelled ‘institutionally racist’, are still coming to light.

Following a BBC investigation, Scotland Yard yesterday took the unusual step of naming Matthew White, who died in 2021 aged 50, as a sixth suspect in the killing.

A string of police blunders and missed opportunities may have helped White – twice arrested on suspicion of murdering Stephen, 18 – to escape justice.

No wonder Neville and Doreen Lawrence lost faith long ago.

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