Too many households are facing the same impossible choice: heat or eat. The big parties laid the groundwork for this crisis by freezing wages and implementing austerity and benefit cuts that marginalised working-class communities. Now that fuel prices and inflation are soaring, people are struggling to cope.
We are told that there is nothing our politicians can do, that the market sets inflation, and we must tighten our belts to get by. Meanwhile, multinational fuel and energy corporations are bringing home record profits.
People Before Profit takes an entirely different approach – we want to see radical measures taken to protect people from the harshest realities of this crisis, and to ensure billions in profit cannot be hoarded by fuel and energy corporations.
We would:
- Launch an Emergency Hardship Fund: distribute a direct payment of £1,000 to households hit by the cost of living crisis, including all but the top fifth of earners. This could be generated by imposing greater taxes on the wealthiest.
- Impose emergency price controls: The Stormont Executive should impose price controls on energy, fuel, and food where necessary. Cutting VAT is not enough because it allows companies to hike prices and profit even more from the difference.
- Cut rents and increase housing benefit: Rents are rising quickly as energy prices soar. We need legislation to cut and freeze rents and increase the Local Housing Allowance on which housing benefit rates are based.
- Ban companies imposing extra charges on payment metre users: 30,000 low-income households who use prepaid metres are being hit with an extra charge which should be scrapped.
- Take the private energy companies back into public ownership: Private monopolies have carved up our gas and electricity markets. A single market has been created for different companies to bid. We need an all-island, not-for-profit public energy company to cut prices.[1]
- Increase the minimum wage to £15 an hour, with government subsidies for small businesses: The current rate of £8.91 is pathetic and creates a low wage economy. Workers deserve a decent wage that they can live on.
- Support inflation-busting pay rises for all workers
People Before Profit also supports the efforts of workers taking industrial action to improve their wages in line with inflation, and defend their living standards during this crisis. Hovis workers in Belfast set the standard when they won an 8% pay rise, and they have been followed by a host of other workers. We reject the argument that higher wages ‘set off a spiral of price hikes’. Wage increases are a valid response to price hikes that have already occurred. Bosses and shareholders should not be allowed to profiteer from rising prices while workers suffer.
[1] For example, NI Electricity, which was privatised in the early 1990s is now owned by the Republic’s Electricity Supply Board (ESB). The electricity the ESB supplies is not to households but to companies that then supply homes. In the North, the main supplier to homes is PowerNI, which is owned by Energia, the main supplier in the Republic. Meanwhile, Phoenix Gas which is the main gas supplier in the North is owned by SSE Airtricity, another company based in Dublin. But just in case you think that this means all the island’s energy is at least Irish owned. It turns out that Bord Gáis Energy is owned by Centrica, formerly British Gas. Even before the current massive price hikes, Centrica’s profits had more than doubled in 2021 to £948 million, according to the Financial Times.
