The UK Government already offers relief to help big business with their energy costs. They call these businesses “energy intensive industries”. They have just announced further measures to help these businesses (about 300 companies employing 60,000 workers). So, targeted proposals could mean energy intensive industries receive even more relief on their electricity bills, and the “Energy Intensive Industries Compensation Scheme” has been extended for a further three years, with its budget more than doubled.
Meanwhile, nothing is being done to help small business, who have no cap on their energy prices and are being forced to pay 70p per KWh with £3 daily standing charges. A recent case about a takeaway in Aberdeen saw quarterly prices for gas rise from £1,000 to £10,000 and electricty rising from around £1,000 to £4,000. This is getting to be a pretty typical story now to be honest. The Takeaway which has been trading for 15 years will open for the last time this Friday, to “get rid of fresh stock” and will then close forever.
Naseem Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, recently asked Rishi Sunak, the (now former) Chancellor of the Exchequer, what he was doing to help her consituent whose business energy bill had risen from £10,731.70 in January 2021 to £48,694.56 in January 2022, a rise of 353% in just 12 months. Sunak could only reference the Intensive Energy Industry Support Scheme, which, while it helps large breweries and steel mills for example, does nothing whatsoever to help small businesses like the one Naz Shah was talking about.
Rishi Sunak has done nothing to help small businesses with their energy bills