The Tories said removing VAT from energy bills – which is currently set at 5% – would save the average household \u00a394 a year based on forecasts for energy costs from July.<\/p>\n
The party said the move would provide the immediate security of lower bills while domestic oil and gas production was ramped up, and would be funded by scrapping various green energy schemes, including heat pump subsidies. <\/p>\n
The Tories added that increasing drilling in the North Sea would generate more tax revenue which could be used to ease the cost of living. <\/p>\n
The party has already promised to scrap green levies on energy bills, including the Renewable Obligations Certificate and the Carbon Tax, which help fund renewable energy projects.<\/p>\n
In her Budget last year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the government would fund 75% of the Renewable Obligations scheme until 2028-29, rather than adding this cost to household energy bills.<\/p>\n
However, the Tories said they would scrap it entirely for businesses as well as households.<\/p>\n
The party said the package would cut energy bills by \u00a3200 a year for the average household.<\/p>\n
The Tories have also called for the government to maximise domestic oil and gas production in the North Sea, and end the windfall tax on oil and gas companies.<\/p>\n
Labour has banned licences for new oil and gas fields in the North Sea but has said oil and gas will continue to be part of the UK’s energy mix in the coming years.<\/p>\n
Labour’s Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Dan Tomlinson said the “central foundation” of the Tory energy plan – to maximise North Sea drilling – “won’t bring bills down”.<\/p>\n
“Now [Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch] says the Tories would scrap the windfall tax which is helping tackle the cost of living,” he said.<\/p>\n
“From trying to plunge our troops headfirst into war without a plan, to her complete mess of an energy policy, Badenoch is proving time and again that she’s completely out of her depth.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tories said removing VAT from energy bills – which is currently set at 5% – would save…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-503042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}