Speaking at a Downing Street press conference, Prime Minster Gordon Brown announced a £1bn energy package under the mantra of ‘save money, save energy’. These proposals include: emergency cold weather payments up from £8.50 to £25 a week; increased help with insulation, new boilers and double glazing; lower social tariffs for 600,00 low income households; and no windfall tax on energy company profits. The latter, stated Mr. Brown, was discounted as not being the ‘best way of moving forward’.  

This package, continued the PM, mark a ‘long term shift in the demand of energy relative to the security of supply’ and represent ‘real and lasting change’.  Although he emphasised that this package is available to all British households the reality is that these measures are designed to target the poorest households and alleviate the heightening pressures of fuel poverty. 

Numerous pressure groups, MPs, trade unions and consumer groups have criticised these plans for not doing enough, however. Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern, said:  

This package will leave millions of the poorest pensioners wondering how they will afford their bills this winter… wider pricing reforms are desperately needed to reduce fuel poverty levels. 

Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg described this package as ‘baby steps in the right direction’ that will ultimately fail to provide the necessary assistance to the ‘millions’ of fuel poor. Joint leader of Unite, Tony Woodley, said ‘only a windfall tax can provide the urgent help necessary’; a line reiterated by the think tank Compass. Meanwhile Shadow Business Secretary Alan Duncan, who has recently met with several trade union leaders, said: 

Despite all their grand promises of cash payouts, all Gordon Brown has been able to offer is to restore a budget which they cut last winter and a package of measures that should have been implemented years ago. Gordon Brown's much-promised energy package turns out only to be undoing mistakes he himself made earlier in the year.