Households face higher bills to cover

£250 billion cost of upgrading UK’s

crumbling roads, railways and utilities

and poor will be hit hardest, MPs warn

• Most costs will be passed on to consumers through higher bills
• Projects costing more than £375billion planned for the next 15 years 
• ‘No one seems to be sticking up for the consumers in all this,’ said committee chair Margaret Hodge 

By RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS

PUBLISHED: 09:31 GMT, 1 July 2014 

Major energy, water and transport projects have all been planned over the next 15 years, but no regulator or government department has worked out whether households will be able to pay for them, they said.

 Energy and water bills have been rising considerably faster than wages in recent years and this trend is likely to continue, the Commons Public Accounts Committee warned.

Forking out: Upgrading Britain’s energy, road and rail infrastructure will cost billions over the next couple of decades

 But although pressure on cash-strapped families is likely to continue ‘no one seems to be sticking up for the consumers in all this,’ the committee’s chair Margaret Hodge said.

 The MPs urged government to step in to assess whether consumers can afford years of rising bills under plans to modernise Britain’s infrastructure.

As much as two-thirds of this investment will be taken on by private companies, but paid for by consumers through utility bills and user charges such as rail fares.

This is likely to lead to higher household bills, hitting poorest families hardest as they spend a higher proportion of their incomes on bills.

Energy bills alone are predicted to be 18 per cent higher in real terms in 2030 than in 2013, MPs warned.

‘Energy and water bills have risen considerably faster than incomes in recent years, and high levels of new investment in infrastructure mean that bills and charges are likely to continue to rise significantly,’ the MPs said.

 The report said that ‘no one in Government is taking responsibility for assessing the overall impact of this investment on consumer bills and whether consumers will be able to afford to pay’.

The cross-party committee said the Treasury should ensure that an assessment of the long-term affordability of bills is carried out.

Margaret Hodge added: ‘Currently, consumers rely solely on Government and regulators to protect their interests. But it doesn’t take much nous to work out that this is going to have a tough impact on the consumer.

‘This is of particular concern given that the poorest households are hit hardest by increases in bills. Poorer households spend more of their incomes on household bills relative to richer households, meaning that funding infrastructure through bills is more regressive than doing so through taxation.

Warning: MPs said household bills will have to rise to pay for the planned infrastructure projects

‘We are calling for the Treasury to produce and publish an assessment of the long-term affordability of bills across the sectors. They need to establish with departments and regulators who is responsible for what in each sector when it comes to assessing the long-term affordability of bills, and pull all the information together.

‘Crucially, they need to assess the combined impact of increased bills on different household types, including those households most vulnerable to price rises.’

The Commons Public Accounts Committee also warned that uncertainty caused by Government policies could potentially add to rising energy bills, with investment in new power stations being delayed and a ‘lack of urgency’ in replacing coal-fired plants.

The Committee said: ‘There is a challenge to the adequacy of supply which is made more difficult by current market interventions. There appears to be a lack of urgency in DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) when so much of our coal fired plants are being decommissioned before the end of 2015.’

The MPs said Energy Secretary Ed Davey’s department ‘needs to act quickly to give certainty and unlock much needed energy investment or the consequences for consumer bills will be worsened’.

A DECC spokesman said: ‘We’re preventing the predicted energy crunch by turning round a legacy of underinvestment and neglect. We have put reforms in place to drive up to £100billion of private sector investment in electricity between now and 2020 with £45billion invested already.

‘If we do not take action now, we are at risk of becoming over-reliant on expensive imported gas and demand for electricity could double by 2050.

‘Our analysis shows that household energy bills in 2020 are expected to be, on average, around £166 lower as a result of policies than they would have been without policies.’

Holding to account: Chair Margaret Hodge said no one was looking out for the consumer

 A Treasury spokesman said: ‘The country will pay a heavy price if we don’t invest in the infrastructure essential for our future.

‘The National Infrastructure Plan provides unprecedented certainty about what those investments are and making sure they are built in a way that delivers value for consumers and taxpayers is at the centre of it. The analysis in the PAC report fails to make a proper assessment of this.

‘We uphold a robust independent regulatory regime with powers to ensure the interests of consumers are properly protected, including the establishment of a new Competition and Markets Authority this year.

‘We are cutting taxes and have taken targeted action to reduce bills. At the last Autumn Statement alone we announced a series of steps which are saving the average household around £50 on their energy bills, and a cap on rail fare increases saving quarter of a million annual season ticket holders an average of £25 this year.

‘It is only because of the Government’s credible economic plan that we have been able both to invest in infrastructure and take action on bills. The single biggest risk now would be abandoning that plan – which would mean worse infrastructure, higher bills, and a weaker economy.’

But Richard Lloyd, executive director of consumer group Which?, said that the government has not gone far enough to ensure that costs are being kept down. ‘Despite calls from Which?, the NAO and the PAC, the Government has still not published an affordability assessment of the impact on consumer bills of infrastructure costs or made a convincing case that these are being kept under tight enough control,’ he said.

‘Today’s findings show why it’s vital that the Government and regulators get a tighter grip on the massive costs that are being passed on to household bills. We need to see rigorous, independent scrutiny to ensure that these costs are affordable and provide value for money for consumers.’

Republican Congressional Candidate Lenar Whitney released a video

Friday calling global warming “the greatest deception in the history of mankind.”

While announcing her candidacy for the 6th Congressional District in Louisiana, Whitney called global warming a “hoax.” The video is a response to those she describes as “liberals in the lamestream media” who “became unglued and attacked me immediately.”

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Calling Al Gore and other liberal politicians pushing global warming “delusional,” Whitney reminds viewers that “The earth has done nothing but get colder each year since the film’s release.”

Whitney then goes on to cite a litany of other scientific facts to rebut and mock global warming believers, including President Obama, whom she calls “foolish” for blaming his lousy economy on warming.

“Last summer,” Whitney reminds, “Antarctica reached the coldest temperature in recorded history. There’s record sheet ice and a 60% rise of ice in the Arctic Sea.”

Using compelling video and a relentless musical score matched only by Whitney’s relentless list of facts, the candidate, who is proud of being described as “one of the most conservative members of the Louisiana Legislature,” rebuts global warming alarmists point by scientific point before reminding voters of the thousands of hacked emails that proved the Climate Research Center of East Anglia “falsified data.”

The video closes with Whitney making a case for developing America’s energy resources and blasts global warming alarmists for using this hoax as a fear tactic to give the federal government control over every aspect of our lives.

Swedish farmers have doubts about climatologists

June 27, 2014 – 06:10

Farmers rely more on their own experiences with changing weather than on climatologists who have no agricultural experience, according to Swedish research.

By: Georg Mathisen

Climatologists are not often found in the Swedish countryside. So farmers have their doubts about climate predictions. (Photo: Microstock)

Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing because of the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide humankind pumps into our fragile atmosphere. But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists.

Surprised

The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings.  Therese Asplund, who recently presented her PhD thesis at Linköping University, was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change.

Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicalsATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem.

But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues.

Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course:

“They explained that they didn’t quite believe in climate changes,” she says. “Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities.”

Used to changes

The climate of course has previously gone through natural spells, and the farmers tend to think in terms of their experiences in recent decades.

“Many have a lot of experience, for instance they recall the mild winters of the 1960s,” explains Asplund.

The farmers also distrust climatologists partly on the grounds of what they perceive of as too much concurrence.

“They think information about climate change is too uniform. Credibility would increase if more contrary perspectives were presented,” she says.

Office science

And above all: They think climatologists lack the experience they have living in keeping with the soil, weather and growth seasons.

The climate of course has previously gone through natural spells, and the farmers tend to think in terms of their experiences in recent decades. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture)

“Climate researchers also are given less credence by farmers because they think the scientists draw their conclusions from theoretical analyses rather than practical experience,” says Asplund.

She finds it hard to say how climatologists can make use of the farmers’ experiences:

“For the research of a scientifically trained climatologist, the opinions of farmers might not be all that essential.  But that does not necessarily make their views irrelevant. For a sociological approach to climate research the farmers’ opinions are highly relevant, on a par with those of other social groups,” asserts Asplund.

Information is not enough

She is concerned about understanding disparate ways of thinking and responding with regard to climate issues.

“With insufficient knowledge, we risk believing that information will readily alter human perceptions and behaviour. The example of climate communication in Swedish agriculture shows what challenges a climatological point of departure for communication can encounter,” says Asplund.

After talking with focus groups all over Sweden, she thinks that information alone cannot change attitudes and behaviour – no matter how well rooted it is in empirical science.

Does this mean it is harder than thought to get Swedish farmers to engage in climate-friendly agriculture? The researcher says both “yes” and “no”.

It will be hard as long as the implementation of improvements is voluntary. But in the discussions the farmers signal that they can adapt – if not to physical climate changes, at least to climate policy decisions. Thus it should be no harder to get them to adjust to climate measures as to other political mandates.

But there is one proviso: “This is a resistance to decrees which they think undermine competitive Swedish agricultural production,” says Therese Asplund.

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