WITH the energy price cap rising to more than £3500, and even higher rises coming down the line, millions of households are facing fuel poverty, and the most vulnerable are facing the stark choice between heating their homes in the coming winter and putting food on the table.
Under the Tories we have seen a proliferation of food banks. In May this year the anti-poverty charity the Trussell Trust reported that the food charity network provided more than 2.1 million emergency food parcels between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022. 832,000 of these were for children. This figure represents an 81% increase compared to the same period five years ago.
Friday’s price rise will make an already difficult situation impossible. People will go without food, vulnerable people will die of hypothermia, disabled people will be unable to afford to run the medical equipment upon which they depend.
We are now also hearing talk of “warm banks” being set up in order to provide people who cannot afford to heat their homes with a warm place to go in order to escape the cold. Glasgow, Aberdeen, Perth and Kinross, Fife, South Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire are amongst the Scottish councils reportedly planning to open up libraries, town halls and community centres as warm spaces for those who are unable to pay their energy bills.
And this is happening, let us not forget, in a country with an abundance of energy resources, both renewable and fossil fuels. That plans are being made for “warm banks” is testament to the catastrophic failure of the Conservatives' management of energy policy. The energy is available, it is just beyond the financial reach of those who need it. And as this goes on the energy producers make record profits.
Energy policy in Scotland is specifically reserved to the UK parliament under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998 that created the devolved Scottish Parliament. For all the hypocritical calls of the Scottish Tories and their allies for the Scottish Government to do more to ameliorate the effects of the crisis, the responsibility for this disaster lies squarely at the door of the Conservative government. Your soaring energy bill is one of those "Union benefits", but one they are not so keen to take the credit for.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that this unaffordable rise in energy bills should not be allowed to go ahead and has called for action from both the British Government which controls energy policy, and the energy companies, calling for a price freeze. A price freeze could be funded by taxing the massive profits of the energy companies, but the Conservatives are more interested in defending corporate greed than they are in defending the vulnerable and the poorest households.
This is what the Conservatives have created, thanks to soaring inflation workers in the UK are suffering a massive drop in income, but executive pay is up a staggering 39%. Energy companies are seeing their profits soar but two million adults can't even afford even to eat every day, never mind heat their homes.
It is only the government in Westminster which has the power to act in order to avert this looming disaster, but the so-called caretaker government is missing in action while the rest of the Conservatives are preoccupied with a leadership contest in which the leading contender turns her face against “handouts” but offers tax cuts as a panacea, even though tax cuts will disproportionately benefit the better off and do nothing to help the poorest. This is a political and moral failure of the very worst kind.
What Scotland is currently experiencing as a part of the UK is far worse than the worst of the dire warnings of Better Together in 2014 of what would happen to Scotland if it became independent. But if we were independent we would have a government elected by and responsible to the people of Scotland and we would not be reduced to praying that Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg and the other right-wing English nationalists of the Conservative party would do something to help us deal with a crisis that they themselves created.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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