Reform’s plans to abolish the Warm Home Discount

Responding to Reform’s plans to abolish the Warm Home Discount, Simon Francis, coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: “The plan being put forward is not one that will cut energy bills, instead it will raise them for the households who can least afford the rising cost of energy. Around six million low income families would lose their winter energy bills support if the plans went ahead.

“The Warm Home Discount should be extended and enhanced, not abolished. It is one of the very few forms of help that reaches people automatically and even at its current level it falls short of what households in fuel poverty need.

“There is a serious debate to be had about which costs belong on energy bills and which belong in general taxation and we have long called for more of the costs on energy bills to be taken on by the Exchequer and funded in a more progressive way. But the apparent slash and burn approach will not work.

“What would genuinely cut bills for good is breaking the link between electricity and gas prices, moving the country off the fossil fuel price rollercoaster, insulating the coldest and dampest homes and a permanent social tariff to protect the poorest households from the next price shock.”