FERGUS EWING: Feeling the Highland cold? Winter fuel payment move could be Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ biggest mistake fears SNP MSP for Inverness and Nairn
The scrapping of the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners is possibly the biggest mistake the new Chancellor has made thus far.
I have heard from many senior citizens who earn just more than the new threshold, and will now receive zero.
This modest £300 payment was extremely valuable but has been removed from them. Some constituents have told me that it allowed them to purchase of a supply of wood to last over the colder months. And bring a bit of cheer to their homes.
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Courier readers of more mature years, may recall that the ‘Cold Climate Allowance’, as it was originally called, began life in the Highlands.
The campaigning effort of Councillor Duncan McKellar (senior) from Grantown-on-Spey, led to the policy first being adopted by the Highland Regional Council, and then taken up more widely. Gordon Wilson MP and my late wife Margaret Ewing, campaigned for many long years for it to be introduced more widely.
Our winters now may not be as cold as they were then, in the ‘70s, but it’s still much colder in the Highlands than down in that cosy neuk called Westminster.
Tomorrow in Holyrood, I have an oral question in the chamber to my friend and parliamentary neighbour, Kate Forbes, in her role as Deputy First Minister. I will ask her if the Scottish Government will lift the absurd ban on installing wood stoves in newly built homes.
Kate led this campaign when on the backbenches, and I am sure she will use her influence, behind the scenes, to lift this ban. It was of course a relic from the disastrous deal with the Green Party.
When that happy, happy day finally dawned when the duo of Green ministers were consigned to the backbenches - in the one recycling scheme that has been a success - I had this to say: “When squatters are eventually evicted, there’s always a mess they leave behind to clear up.” And what a mess it remains.
When there are power cuts in the Highlands, as so often can occur, wood stoves or real fires are a vital back-up for thousands of people. In Sweden it’s compulsory to have such a wood stove or other back-up for that very reason.
When Westminster takes the winter fuel payment away, at least let Holyrood restore a little warmth to our lives.
Meanwhile, Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor may reconsider investing in UK oil if taxes rise even further. Equinor, one of the most successful companies in the world, is one of a handful of major investors in new renewable energy and green energy schemes.
If we drive them out of the UK because of punitive tax policies, we will not only need to replace the gas and oil they produce here with more carbon intensive imports - we will also risk losing that vital investment in essential renewable alternatives such as carbon capture and storage and hydrogen. In short, in one budget, we will kill oil and gas; and also drive renewables investment elsewhere. It’s already started to happen.
The National Grid estimate the necessary investment in green power will cost £1.4 trillion. The UK just doesn’t have this money. Without private sector cash from Equinor and a few other majors, the green project so beloved by Mr Milliband will be doomed to certain failure.
Unless the new UK government change tack radically, they will kill off investment in green power, and also destroy the incredibly valuable oil and gas sector in the UK - which should still operate successfully for decades to come. They should instead sit down with industry and thrash out a 10-year stable tax deal. If not, this may, in my view as a former energy minister, be the biggest blunder any government in the UK has made this century - destroying oil and gas in its maturity and strangling renewables at birth.
