Articles

A long-expected u-turn on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s plan to hike the Energy Price Guarantee was confirmed in the Budget today.

But it’s little more than a bail-out for energy suppliers in the face of soaring consumer debt, while fossil fuel giants will be left to keep raking in huge profits.

Now it’s time for us to push on for a real transformation of our energy system.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is u-turning on his plan to hike energy prices again. But he’s not doing it out of the kindness of his heart – it’s to protect a failing market.

We’ll still see our bills rise on 1 April, fossil fuel giants will continue making billions in profits and energy suppliers are getting bailed out by the government again.

Ofgem’s price cap: going down. Wholesale prices: falling. Our energy bills: going up again.

Last year was a rollercoaster year yet, for most of us, 2023 is going to get worse before it gets better: the government is increasing energy prices yet again.

But Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is running out of excuses to stick to his plan. Here’s why.

Don’t Pay launched back in June with a few flyers and some volunteers to hand them out at a trade union demonstration. Today, our network of regional coordinators from across the country are drawing up plans for the next stages of our campaign.

As we make plans moving forward, let’s take stock of where we’re at now and what we’ve achieved.

On January 19th, the Office for National Statistics will announce the number of excess winter deaths last year. Don't Pay, Fuel Poverty Action and other groups are taking action around this date.

Yesterday, local Don't Pay groups across the country linked up with Fuel Poverty Action and other community campaigns to hold 'warm-up' actions — occupying a space to keep warm and protest fuel poverty.

Bristol, Brighton, London, Liverpool, Glasgow and more all saw warm-up in museums sponsored by fossil fuel profiteers, energy company headquarters, shopping centres and other locations.

Don't Pay groups kept warm and spoke to members of the public about the energy bills strike.

The mass non-payment of energy bills is happening now. At least 3 million people are in debt to their energy supplier and 7 million of us can’t keep up.

We must now turn this mass default into mass resistance – and strike together for a different future.

December 3rd/4th will see a wave of coordinated Warm Up protests across the UK - find your local one here!

We're being scammed — yet again.

Bulb's rapid rise and even quicker fall is one of the most revealing stories about the energy market in the UK and who it works for. We've picked up the £6.5 billion bill for its failure, only for the government to sell it on to a rival energy supplier. And it won't reveal the terms of the deal.

In short, it's a story in which profits are privatised and losses are nationalised.

We’re paying more for energy than anywhere else in the world.

So, while the government and energy industry try to pass the blame on — to Russia, the pandemic and so on — the reality is far closer to home. It’s a story of deregulation, greed and profiteering.

The new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt is planning to push through another massive price hike in April 2023. He’ll do it even though millions of us already can’t pay our energy bills.

We simply can’t keep paying to prop up the billion pound profits of the fossil fuel giants, letting them squeeze us for every last penny. We can’t wait for a general election in two years, and just keep hoping these unelected millionaires have a change of heart.

We can’t go on like this. The crisis is here, now.

We know energy suppliers’ plan this winter: wash their hands of anyone who can’t pay.

Our energy bills have doubled, and millions of us simply can’t pay. Despite making record profits, there’s no fair plan to address the problem – instead energy suppliers are switching hundreds of thousands of us to prepayment. If you can’t top-up, you get cut off.

These exploitative, morally-bankrupt companies only care if you can pay the extortionate prices they charge. If you can’t, they’ll leave you to freeze.

Shell, £8.2 billion. BP, £7.1 billion. These two energy companies made more than £15 billion in combined profit between July and September this year.

In the last 12 months, their profits have doubled – and so have our energy bills. This is what’s fuelling the “cost of living crisis”: we pay, they profit.

It’s a crisis of unchecked profiteering and greed.

An unelected multi-millionaire has been installed in 10 Downing Street. The government has already made a u-turn on the “Energy Price Guarantee”, and we face another energy bills price hike in April 2023. It’ll be a cold miserable winter for millions – unless we take decisive action together.

So we’re striking on 1 December 2022.

They’re making us pay for their failures.

The government's scrapped the mini-budget and announced the Energy Price Guarantee will only freeze prices for 6 months, not 2 years.

Energy prices are already unaffordable – and now we face another huge hike in April.

The UK’s biggest energy supplier warned the government of the “existential” threat of our strike. It’s evidence of just how powerful the Don’t Pay campaign is becoming.

We’ve never been about just asking nicely – the way we end the energy bills crisis is by building leverage, a threat they can’t ignore.

From Aberdeen to Exeter more than 20 Don’t Pay local groups took to the streets today for a Day of Action, burning our bills in protest as energy prices rose once again.

Today’s Don't Pay National Day of Action marks the beginning of a new phase for our grassroots campaign.

On our own we’re isolated but, together with a million others, we’re unstoppable.

We've now proven the strength of the Don’t Pay campaign. After 180,000 of us pledged to strike, the government was forced to reduce the catastrophic energy price hike scheduled for 1st October. The threat of all of us saying we won’t pay left the government with no other option.

This is why we’ll keep going and strike when we hit 1 million pledges.

Everyone can help make this Day of Action a powerful moment in our campaign – it's about being visible in the communities we live in.

Find out about your local Don't Pay event, get out on the streets and tell the government we won't pay for their profits!

Liz Truss’s “energy price guarantee” is a scam.

Millions of us still won’t be able to pay – while energy companies get their profits guaranteed.

We’re paying the price: it’ll cost us 96% more to keep our homes warm this winter and energy companies will make £170 billion in excess profits. It’s a crisis of greed and we’re left to pick up the tab.

Our already record-high energy bills are rising yet again and will continue to be unaffordable for millions of us. Under Truss's 'energy price guarantee', the average bill will rise to £2,500 per year — 96% higher than last winter.

We need to keep up the pressure.

Don't Pay is calling for a national day of action on Saturday 1st October - let's get out on the streets in our communities and keep building the strike!

There's clear and overwhelming public support in this country for a radically transformed energy industry that works for people and the planet, not just a system to generate profits and make the already rich even wealthier.

We have to keep pushing the strike to reverse the price hikes and end the profiteering.

It's been almost six months since the government announced the Energy Bills Support Scheme. Previously they had offered an insulting £200 loan to cover the expected increase in energy bills, and this scheme raised it to a still-insulting £400 which wouldn't have to be repaid. This would be spread over six months, a mere £66 each month. Now it's clear that even this joke solution is just another scheme to force us to keep paying our unaffordable bills.

As Ofgem hiked the energy price cap by a massive 80% on Friday, Don’t Pay groups across the country came together with a clear message: no one cold or hungry this winter!

As we approach limits on our energy, our food and our water due to under-investment, profiteering and short-term planning, the concept of smart technology is being increasingly sold to the public as an answer to these problems.

The solution cannot be found in more corporate monitoring, control and profiteering but instead the answer is to take back control of our resources from the private corporations, invest in them properly and run these public resources for the common good.