Morning:
10°c
Just a couple of days after the National Housing Federation suggested that as many as a quarter of British households could find themselves in fuel poverty spending more than 10 per cent of their income on fuel bills the Government has unveiled a £910 million package of measures to help these households out.
The main thrust of the proposals is help with cutting energy costs there will be free cavity wall and loft insulation for worse-off families and pensioners. Other measures include 50 per cent off the cost of insulation for all households, a freeze on fuel bills for poorer individuals and an increase in cold weather payments. Mr Brown is also encouraging all of us to save energy by switching off lights and drawing curtains after dark.
Politically, this may not be enough to stave off a rebellion on the part of backbench Labour MPs who want a windfall tax on energy companies' profits. When these proposals go before parliament, some rebels will try to force a vote, although they will almost certainly be seen off. A windfall tax would, right now, send exactly the wrong signal to corporations, particularly given that the energy providers have produced more funding for these new measures than a tax would have elicited.
Of course encouraging energy conservation is worthwhile reducing consumption of gas and electricity is a better bet than subsidising it. Yet today's measures are not an alternative to a more generous winter fuel allowance for pensioners. There also remains the problem of how these measures will apply to thousands of badly-off households who do not own their own homes.
The Government needs to think how to persuade landlords, who do not have to pay tenants' fuel bills, to spend money on insulating their properties, or tenants to spend on improving homes that do not belong to them.
The measures are unlikely to quell discontent about massive increases in fuel costs by as much as 30 per cent in some recent cases among households struggling to pay fuel bills, by no means all of which will qualify for the new measures. The Lib Dems have proposed a cap on further price rises and a Competition Commission investigation into the energy industry; the Tories, while criticising Mr Brown's measures, have not indicated just how they would improve on them. These measures are useful, but no substitue for a coherent energy policy.
Co-op schools
Education is shaping up to be one of the major themes of the next general election. The Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, has announced plans for up to 100 co-operative schools, whereby parent and community groups or charities would be given funds to run and perhaps establish schools independently of local authorities.
It is an extension of Labour policy to allow parents a greater say in how schools are run. As it happens, one Tory education proposal has been for precisely such co-operative schools, on the Scandinavian model based on parents' ability to claim from government the amount a child's education would cost in an existing school.
What matters for parents is not who thought of the idea first but whether the model is a means of increasing the number of good schools.
Frankly, there are only limited numbers of parents able to take over the running of schools; the co-op model may, like city academies, work only in some areas. But the crucial issue is whether it would liberate some schools from the control of local authorities and free up funding that would be spent on bureaucracy. If Labour as well as the Tories have taken this principle on board, well and good.
Sponsored fitness
ADIDAS, one of the major Olympics backers, is opening a £1 million chain of sponsored outdoor gyms around London to help children keep fit. It is a positive move in the spirit of this paper's campaign for a grassroots sporting legacy from 2012. Now, how about the other sponsors?
