Smorgasbord Budget heavy on contradictions

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

And so too with politicians, so when Labour talk of green energy, it could mean a host of things. The Budget uncertainty added to the confusion over the direction of travel. Yes, the Government wants to encourage EV use, but we’ll tax it.

A new electric vehicle excise duty will amount to 3p per mile for electric cars and 1.5p for plug-in hybrids to be payable each year alongside vehicle excise duty.

So that’s a disincentive. But wait! Some of that money (£200m) will go to a rollout of electric vehicle charging points.

Confused? Well, it cannot but make high milage users reconsider switch to electric.

Better news came with the announcement that the Budget will take levies off energy bills to save families £150 on average next year.

And the UK's Energy Company Obligation (ECO scheme), for home improvements including insulation, new heating systems, and solar panels will be scrapped after the National Audit Office revealed that most of homes with external wall insulation installed under it had “major issues”.

A logical U-turn on North Sea oil and gas was also made, with DESNZ’s new North Sea Future Plan allowing for a rather more liberal interpretation of the ‘ban’ on new oil and gas exploration with generous extensions of existing fields.

It has always been illogical to cut regulated production to buy elsewhere whilst leaving consumption. However any chance to actually cut emissions by bring production back to the UK were somewhat soften by there being no mention of changes to the windfall tax.

Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, said: "The ECO scheme had become simply too wasteful, adding high costs to everyone’s bills and only delivering meagre savings for recipients. A reset through the Warm Homes Plan is the right approach.”



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