By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
The Government is preparing to ditch the so-called boiler tax in an announcement which could come as soon as this week, The Sunday Telegraph understands.
Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, will not be proceeding with the policy, which had been blamed for pushing up gas boiler prices and criticised as a form of “government coercion”.
Under the Clean Heat Market Mechanism, manufacturers would be required to match, or substitute, 4 per cent of their boiler sales with heat pumps or face a fine of £3,000 for every installation they fell short by.
The scheme was due to start in April, with the target rising to 6 per cent from April 2025.
Home heating companies had warned that the plans would force them to increase the price of their boilers by up to £120 – a move criticised by Ms Coutinho.
The Telegraph now understands that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is preparing to announce that it will not be going ahead with the fines for at least the first year of the scheme.
Ministers needed to lay a Statutory Instrument by April to provide the legal powers to enforce the quotas, but this is no longer expected to happen.
Instead, 2024-25 will be treated as a “monitoring year” in which the Government tracks sales of heat pumps relative to boilers.
The move is likely to be welcomed by Conservative MPs on the Right of the party who had criticised the scheme.
Craig Mackinlay, the chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Tory MPs, wrote to Ms Coutinho in February urging her to “trust your instincts and scrap this harmful policy”, branding the scheme “Government coercion”.
“Consumer choice has to be at the heart of a Conservative, free-market approach to Net Zero,” he said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/02/government-scrap-boiler-tax-blamed-pushing-up-prices/
As so often, this Government is fiddling around at the edges, instead of taking the bull by the horns.
This was an ideal opportunity to abandon completely the whole idea of quotas and fines. Moreover they should have declared that heat pumps would not be forced on homeowners or gas boilers banned until the former were financially competitive.
If Labour want to reverse such a policy when elected, let them face the backlash.
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March 3, 2024 at 03:51AM
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