On Wednesday, the Reform Party held a press conference where it unveiled its policies on Net Zero. “Reform UK puts the renewables industry on notice,” explained its tweet. Central to this intervention is a “windfall tax on renewable generated power”, to “claw back” the vast subsidies that the sector has received – now amounting to roughly £10 billion per year. But despite this being the first policy statement from a Westminster political party to depart from the climate consensus this century, not all Net Zero sceptics are happy with it.
They may have cause to complain. Windfall taxes are far from the letting-the-market-decide policies that one might expect Reform leader Nigel Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice to offer. Tice’s introduction, for example, highlighted his impressive business experience. And it has long been a major criticism of the green agenda that subsidy regimes seemingly ‘picked winners’. Surely the free-market centre Right stalwarts couldn’t be proposing punitive taxes? Along these lines, the Telegraph’s Andrew Lilico tweeted, “This is very silly” and that “If you don’t want to subsidise something, remove the subsidy; don’t tax the subsidy”. The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Harry Wilkinson was concerned with the chaos that the tax could create, telling Talk TV’s Ian Collins that it could increase bills.
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