Energy "loan" from the Government 7 February 2022 at 10:20AM edited 7 February 2022 at 12:25PM in Loans 4 replies 381 views

Attacape2

This is a copy of an email that I sent to The Treasury, I posted a copy of the wording on Twitter and it's getting a very good response.  I wonder if Martin would do a feature on his Show, as I feel that the legality of this needs to be brought into question.  I feel that the Government should follow the French and impose a maximum 4% increase in the Cap.

Dear Mr Sunak,

We are lucky enough to be in a position where we do not require a loan to help pay for our energy.

If we did need a loan, we would expect to have a apply for one and would read the agreement carefully before taking out the loan.

This scheme of yours appears to be flawed on so many levels;

1. You are trying to impose this loan on every household, without their permission.

2. There does not appear to be any written agreement.

3. Because there is no written agreement, we have no assurance that the energy companies will pass on the repayments to the Treasury.

4. If a £200 reduction is made to the energy bill of say a house of multiple occupancy, what happens when the individual occupants move on to different locations? Will all of those individuals be liable to repay £200 each?

There are so many other things I could mention, but I’m trying to keep this message brief as you may have a lot of similar messages sent to you.

My chief concern, however, is that this appears to be little more than a £200 gift to the energy companies using our money!

At best it allows the energy companies to keep increasing their prices, in a similar way that the Help to Buy scheme has kept house prices high. At worst, you are giving £200 per household to the energy companies that is our money, which will then be added back to our energy bills in the future!!

In short, I believe that this is a deceitful scam and must not be pulled off on a generally gullible public.

Regards,

(Removed by Forum Team)  

aoleks

there's a higher chance he'll read your letter if you name it "cheese and wine invoice".

Thrugelmir

If you are comfortably off then donate the money to charity. Better use of time and resources. 

booneruk

I listened to a fairly compelling argument for loaning money to the providers to shield consumers from the price spikes - can't remember the finer detail, but I think it was thisismoney's podcast a couple of weeks ago.

Anyways, if "we" get the loan now but pay it back in future years, isn't that benefiting us due to inflation? Paying back the same amount of money with no interest in years to come? sounds like a win, even if a small one.

pjcox2005

The scheme clearly isn't perfect, but are you willing to lobby for Sunak to change it to one which may be means tested, miss vulnerable out and most likely slower and more costly to roll out just because some may end up paying an extra £40 per year.

Without being flippant as i know for some £40 can be costly, but surely the message people should be trying to share is take the £200 now, don't cut off your heating or electricity if it leaves you exposed and don't not use the discount to buy food just because they'll have to pay it back.

You would expect energy prices to reduce as things stabalise and you know people are going to follow prices closer so energy companies will be in focus. I just think people want to argue on this one and present examples like what if I'm in a house share and move out to own place, or a couple split up. Ignoring that it will happen the other way round.

It's not perfect (and could probably go further by raising taxes in various areas or as you mention a cap but campaign on those separately), but if people are complaining about high energy prices then at least something has been done as well as adding the discretionary fund as well. Martin seemed reasonably accepting of it as a starting solution from the bits i've seen.