The government must declare energy prices a national emergency

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Sign of the times: a protest outside the office of energy regulator Ofgem in London on Friday (Getty)

The news that the energy cap in April could rise even to £10,000 per year for the average household is devastating.

The government must declare this a national emergency and consider every measure possible to ensure the health, safety and security of the nation and of all British citizens. If the government fails to do so, then the Tory party can expect nothing less than to be consigned to history by a British public who will rightly fire it from office.

The crisis may in part or in full have begun with Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, but it is now the government’s inaction that is continuing it.

Ian Henderson

Norwich

The energy price cap seems to be not the limit of the rise in the price of a unit of energy as it is widely presented. At the last increase, my supplier increased the daily standing charge by almost twice the increase of the unit price.

Is the government being honest with everyone?

Jonathan Longstaff

Buxted

Greed on the green

How refreshing to see that the LIV and PGA tours have caught up with the rest of the business world by agreeing that greed is the best philosophy for the game of golf.

Can I assume that there will be a pro-rata increase in the prize money for amateur golf events, in the best tradition of imitation being the best policy?

I can hardly wait to put my name down on the timesheet for the first open day in some club for us amateurs, offering 10 grand to the winner.

Liam Power

Dundalk

Why are the poor paying more?

In our capitalist system, the norm is the riskier a transaction, the higher the cost. So people with a poor credit rating pay higher interest rates on the assumption they are more likely to default.

Why, then, are those who pay for their energy upfront paying more than others? The fact that these are often amongst the poorest in society makes it immoral that those on pre-payment meters are not immediately put onto the lowest.

Geoff Forward

Stirling

Saddled with bills

Nadhim Zahawi, the chancellor, has urged the public to cut their energy use. A bit rich from a minister who claimed thousands in expenses to heat his horses.

Of course we are all trying to reduce our energy usage – it is the only thing we can do and the only thing we have control over. But for many others, such as the sick and the elderly, this is not an option.

What we all want to know, Mr Zahawi, is what this patronising and inept government going to do about the energy crisis.

Paul Morrison

Glasgow

Keep it short

Dear Sir Graham Brady,

I’m not a Tory party member, but I wanted to write to you, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, in order to challenge the calamitous leadership election your party is undergoing.

In the digital age, there is absolutely no reason why you couldn’t have run a much shorter leadership election campaign. Most of us bank online and manage our entire lives on the phone, via a tablet or a laptop. You could also have forced all members to vote online and not by post to save time (as most Lib Dem internal elections are run nowadays).

Yes, this may have made this inaccessible for a handful of your members, but I really don’t think that this a worry for the rest of us as energy bills mount, the criminal justice system falls apart and more and more sections of the workforce are contemplating or are already on strike.

Your party talks about ID fraud being a serious risk for a general election, but is allowing non UK nationals living abroad to vote to choose the next PM – so long as they have joined Conservatives Abroad. Yet those of us who aren’t members of your party but are able to vote in a general election cannot. Please do explain the logic here?

On Friday, not a single minister could even be bothered to come out and discuss the energy price cap on the morning news round. Yet both party leadership candidates are quite happy to attend hustings after hustings in order to be remembered for a sound bite and to do pieces to camera when it suits them.

I do hope that the Conservative Party will learn the lessons from this debacle that you have presided over. This can never be allowed to happen again while the country falls apart around you.

Chris Key

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