CHANGE: Liz Truss ditches fracking ban; vows ‘never again’ on exorbitant energy bills. Prime Minister pledges to ‘revolutionize’ supply as she takes action to ease household fuel crisis.
Britons must never again be forced to pay exorbitant energy bills, Liz Truss will declare on Thursday as she promises more North Sea drilling and ditches the fracking ban.
Annual energy bills will be frozen at around £2,500 for the average household both this winter and next, and green levies will be scrapped.
Businesses will get protection from energy price rises in a pandemic-style government intervention that could end up costing more than £150 billion.
But on Wednesday, the pound plummeted to its weakest level since 1985 on the new Prime Minister’s first full day in office as markets appeared to baulk at the scale of the move to tackle bills, underscoring the financial challenges ahead.
Ms Truss will say: “I know families and businesses across the country are worried about how they are going to make ends meet this autumn and winter.
“Putin’s war in Ukraine and weaponisation of gas supply in Europe is causing global prices to rise – and this has only made clearer that we must boost our long-term energy security and supply.
“We will take action immediately to help people and businesses with bills but also take decisive action to tackle the root cause of these problems so that we are not in this position again.”
That’s a massive change from Boris Johnson, her predecessor, who earlier in his career wrote car reviews for the British edition of GQ, and made several appearances on Top Gear, but last year, “spelt out the revolt against modernity that lies at the heart of climate-change alarmism when he used his speech at COP to complain about the invention of the steam engine. That contraption, which gave rise to the Industrial Revolution itself, was a ‘doomsday device’ that started the clock ticking on the eco-calamity we currently face, he madly said. And this is a PM who claims to stand up for British history and British greatness.”