I was delighted to learn that the Government is considering axing the ‘boiler tax’, which would raise the cost of new gas boilers by £120 in the first year of the scheme.
Finally, some common sense seems to be setting in – but you can bet that civil servants and Westminster lackeys (aka the blob) will be queuing up for a last ditch defence of this draconian bureaucratic nonsense.
If Net Zero can be achieved at all, which I have my doubts about, then it is only through free markets and genuine competition.
The Clean Heat Market Mechanism, the boiler tax’s official title, is all about setting top-down targets for heat pump sales and ignoring what consumers actually want.
Andrea Jenkyns is Conservative MP for Morley and Outwood in West Yorkshire
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It can only leave people poorer.
In their relentless push for Net Zero, the civil servants have come up with a ludicrous policy whereby boiler makers who fail to sell Whitehall’s target number of heat pumps, incur a £3,000 penalty for every failed sale!
What an outrage!
What’s more, in a free market, the result of this policy will obviously be that boiler makers increase their prices for everyone, by as much as £120 this year.
In other words, this policy will result in tax on working people, and it will be the poorest who cannot afford the high upfront costs of heat pump who suffer most.
Heat pumps are already getting wads of taxpayer’s cash.
They already receive a subsidy of £7,500 each and are exempt from VAT.
That people still don’t want them despite these nudges only warns us how damaging socialist targets could be – but the green idealogues want to double down on their obsession with heat pumps with more Government coercion.
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My constituents in Leeds South West and Morley aren’t interested in net zero at all, that is why I have made campaigning against this nonsense a priority in my recently published election manifesto.
Labour might support a boiler tax or any number of new net zero taxes and lifestyle restrictions, but Conservatives should not.
Scrapping the boiler tax would show voters that we are on their side.