Letters: Not another carte blanche
[Re: A blank cheque for two years of capped energy prices was a perverse kind of plan, yesterday]
In response to Jonathan Maxwell’s piece yesterday, I would not call the plan to cap energy prices “perverse”, I would say it was about giving people the ability to plan, to know what was going to happen next. Throughout the pandemic, we had to live with the constant threat of “cliff edges” at the end of the furlough scheme and other support programmes.
It was a very tense time for businesses and for households.
If this was the only attempt to give certainty from the short-live time of Liz Truss, I do not think, in that instance, it was misguided.
Perhaps it is uncertain to tie ourselves so closely to wholesale gas prices, but are we not already tied to them, by virtue of us having to pay them? If and when another solution became available, we could have unravelled the scheme then.
Instead, it’s just uncertainty on uncertainty and more uncertainty. I hope Rishi Sunak learns from the fears of many and gives us a way forward soon.
Lake Harris