Rejoin EU Party news release
The UK’s decision to wrench itself out of common European energy trading arrangements as part of Brexit is partly to blame for today’s huge hike in energy bills, the Rejoin EU Party says.
The trade deal agreed by the UK and EU excludes Great Britain from the EU’s Internal Energy Market, leaving it relying on less efficient and more costly cross-border electricity trading arrangements than those available to EU member states.
The UK has lost much of its control of prices by surrendering its ability to take part in European-level energy auctions that decide the cost of fuel.
While Brexit is not the only factor responsible for the increases, it has removed a major lever available to the government to ease the burden.
Households face a 54% rise in energy bills from today, April 1st, adding around an extra £700 to the average household’s annual gas and electricity bill. Prices are expected to rise further in six months’ time, leaving millions of people potentially struggling to make ends meet.
Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and the Vote Leave campaign claimed fuel bills would be lower for everyone following Brexit. Instead, bills have risen exponentially.
Meanwhile, the EU’s recently announced deal with the US to import an extra 15bn cubic metres of US liquefied natural gas this year will help reduce European reliance on Russian gas imports but excludes the UK due to Brexit, removing a means to increase UK energy security at a time when Vladimir Putin is using energy as a bargaining chip in his invasion of Ukraine.
John Stevens, former Conservative MEP and energy investor and now supporter of the Rejoin EU Party, said: “Brexit has excluded the UK from joint EU energy policy and from the recent deal between the EU and the US on liquefied natural gas imports.
“Taken together, this means UK energy prices will be higher than in the EU, with all which that implies for our prosperity.
“It also means the cause of independence in Scotland will be substantially strengthened, as England will become more dependent on Scottish energy sources – both carbon and renewable – than at any time since the heyday of North Sea oil. To keep the lights on and the country together, we have to re-join the EU.”
Notes for editors:
The Rejoin EU party is campaigning to re-join the EU because we believe the UK belongs at the heart of Europe and re-joining is the only way to solve the problems Brexit has created. Brexit is broken and it’s breaking our country too. All the promises on which Brexit was sold to the electorate in 2016 are now increasingly exposed as fantasy. Far from bringing the promised reduction in red tape and bureaucracy and providing £350m a week for the NHS, Brexit makes trading with the crucial European market more complex, difficult and expensive and threatens to reduce funding for public services. Sectors such as farming, fisheries & financial services, supposed to benefit from Brexit, now face an uncertain future. If you agree Brexit is making our country poorer, less tolerant and less united, join us and send a message to Westminster that you want your EU membership back, along with all its freedoms and benefits. One of those benefits was membership of student exchange scheme Erasmus – sign our petition to re-join it here: actionstorm.org/petitions/stop-brexit-dogma-destroying-erasmus-study-rights-sign-our-petition-now-62068c8633462 <actionstorm.org/petitions/stop-brexit-dogma-destroying-erasmus-study-rights-sign-our-petition-now-62068c8633462>
Contact Rejoin EU at <admin@therejoineuparty.com>admin@therejoineuparty.com <admin@therejoineuparty.com> or visit our website at www.therejoineuparty.com <www.therejoineuparty.com/>. You can also follow the party on Twitter at @rejoinp