. ML {5
hope; Liege 7M4


From Viscount Ridley

 

Baroness Verma,
House of Lords
London SW 1

 ?Sam 7 1 December 2614

As you know I put down a written question on 11 November, asking for a factual
answer detailing ?the impacts in pounds per megawatt hour ofeach energy and
climate change policy on retail gas prices, and retail electricity prices, for
domestic consumers, medium-sized businesses, and energy-intensive
users in their low, central, and high fossil-fuel price scenarios."

The roply I received on 217'31 November is, I am sorry to say, no answer at all, and
in effect is a refusal to disclose. Annex are modelled bill impacts. not price
impacts. The tables showing the electricity and gas price impacts 
rather than modelled average bill effects appeared in the three previous editions
ofthis document-and were omitted this time. Why? They must exist because the
bill impacts could not be generated without them.

All previous publications ofthese numbers have included price impacts and the
very title of the current document refers to "prices". I know that a number of
pressure groups and consumer organisations are understandably irritated by
this refusal to provide the information, and I know that many businesses require
price impact information and rely on it. it surely represents a reduction in
governmental transparency to withhold it, in abrupt contrast to the promises
this government has made.

I am not. ofcourse, blaming you personally for the failure to disclose, but I do
intend to pursue this line ofinquiry, because as you know I have maintained for
several years that the Labou r/Lib-Dem policy ofheavily subsidizing renewables
even if they prove ineffective and costly is a mistake. The justi?cation for it - that
fossil fuel prices would rise - is proving more erroneous by the day. With fossil-
fuel prices now failing, the cost ofthese policies, falling especially heavily on
poorer households, is rising ever more stEeply and we are in practice insulating
British consumers and companies against falling energy costs enjoyed elsewhere
in the world. a point I made in the shale debate recently. It is vital that we revisit
the policy foisted on the country by Ed Miliband when he was energy secretary
of making hard-working consumers subsidise wealthy investors in expensive
forms of energy generation, before it drives yet more manufacturing industry
abroad and further hobbies our competitiveness.

Accordingly, lam copying this letter to Matthew Hancock MP and also to Oliver
Letwin MP on the subject oftransparency.