Richard Littlejohn has covered for the Mail the appalling new Energy Bill currently being rushed through Parliament, pointing out that, among other horrors, homeowners will be liable for jail for failing to install a hated heat pump. Here’s an excerpt.
Outraged at having to pay £12.50 a day for driving your ‘non-compliant’ car in Genghis Khan’s Ulez zone, or one of the other cynical low emissions rackets popping up everywhere? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
The eco-maniacs are coming for your house next, as part of their deranged mission to make us all colder and poorer.
Under new legislation, which sailed through its third reading in the Commons this week, homeowners and landlords whose properties don’t meet Net Zero targets could be fined £15,000 and jailed for up to a year. Yep, you could end up behind bars if you fail to fit a heat pump.
While most reporting of the Energy Bill has centred on the Government’s shameful U-turn on allowing onshore wind farms, there has been scant coverage of the clauses which criminalise failure to comply with “energy efficiency” regulations.
If the Bill passes into law, it will provide for the imposition of “civil penalties” not exceeding £15,000 and “criminal offences” not exceeding 12 months’ imprisonment.
Anyone selling or letting a property must obtain an energy performance certificate. Inspectors will be given the power to order “improvements” and prevent the property being sold or let if they are not carried out to the letter.
Such improvements will include fitting heat pumps, loft insulation, double glazing and so-called “smart appliances”.
Compulsory installation of smart meters, fridges, washing machines, immersion heaters and so on, all connected to the internet, will allow the Government and the energy companies to monitor electricity consumption and switch off your supply if they think you’re using too much.
I’m not making this stuff up. It’s all there in Hansard, Parliament’s official record.
When the Energy Bill’s third reading came before the House this week, only a handful of MPs spoke out against it. Honourable mentions must go to Tory members, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood, Craig Mackinlay and Richard Drax. (Drax B, as he’s known in the trade.)
The rest of the Muppets sat on their hands, or retired to the subsidised bars and restaurants, as this sinister piece of legislation slithered its way through the session, virtually unopposed. Some of the more bonkers MPs even thought these draconian proposals didn’t go far enough.
Brighton’s Green MP Caroline ‘Here We Go Looby’ Lucas called for an immediate end to all gas and oil exploration on the bizarre grounds that this would free us from dependence on Vlad Putin?
Eh?
Ed Miliband moved an amendment which would have forced the National Grid to get rid of all fossil fuels by 2030.
Nurse!
Fortunately Mister Ed’s economic suicide prescription fell at the first hurdle. But Tuesday’s risible ‘debate’ only served to demonstrate just how comprehensively, and apparently irreversibly, our elected representatives have capitulated to the Net Zero nutcases.
When push came to shove, only 19 MPs voted against the Bill. So out of a grand total of 650, we must assume that 631 either couldn’t be bothered or genuinely believe turning homeowners into criminals in their insane crusade to cut the world’s carbon output by a piffling 1% is a proper way to behave in a modern alleged democracy. Do they really think people should be banged up for failing to fit a heat pump? And is this the desperate state to which a so-called Conservative Party — which is supposed to stand for individual liberty and a property-owning democracy — has been reduced?
Worth reading in full.
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