Standing charges are a rip off which add to the enormous profits these companies make before even charging you for what you use.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are cancelling the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and are calling upon us to make sacrifices and accept difficult financial decisions. This is a grave and unnecessary injustice that will cause great hardship among older people.  It would therefore  be consistent and appropriate for MPs to lose their own fuel allowance that they get to cover utility costs for a second home linked to their work as an MP, and share the pain with pensioners. And if they aren't willing to do that the Government should drop plans to scrap the Winter Fuel Allowance, and increase wealth taxes on multi-millionaires and billionaires, and the windfall tax on energy companies who are making billions in profit instead.

It is important because it's immoral/ unfair the way energy suppliers have applied the added cost.

Other people should join this campaign as the people I’ve spoken to all feel the same way, I’ve not had one person think there’s any value gained by this charge. Some people have had the same meter for over 20 years so they could’ve bought a meter & have no charges now.

Thousands of us energy customers (probably including you if you pay by monthly direct debit) are being regularly charged more than we owe for our energy use. In this way Energy companies are taking massive interest-free loans at the expense of us, their customers, making us believe we're better off keeping our accounts in credit. They are reluctant to refund these overpayments, even when we leave them for a new supplier and some of us are owed thousands of pounds taken through these direct debit overpayments. Energy companies should be made to declare publicly how much they are holding onto in 'customer credit', to offer customers regular opportunities to claim a refund and they should be forced to stick to a time limit for credit to be refunded to former customers. Times are hard enough without us having to subsidise greedy energy suppliers in this way.

The UK has enshrined its objective of carbon neutrality in law. Now, the double whammy of soaring energy bills and Russia's use of gas as a weapon of economic warfare make the development of renewables and increasing energy efficiency more urgent than ever before. Grade 2 listed and conservation area properties are numerous and among the most energy-inefficient in Islington, which aims to become a net zero borough by 2030. With residential buildings accounting for over a third of carbon emissions, planning regulations are preventing landlords, tenants and residents from radically reducing their energy bills and their carbon footprint. Councils such as Kensington & Chelsea are adapting their planning rules to help. Experts agree that London will not meet its climate targets if its many listed homes and conservation areas are left unchanged, as current planning regulations demand. It also means homes are less energy-secure and more expensive to heat than they need be.

Instead of addressing the energy crisis through home insulation and cheap, green options like wind and solar, ministers have doubled down on dangerous fossil fuels by trying to revive the failing fracking industry. Fracking will have no impact on energy bills for those struggling this winter. It will only make our homes less safe, pollute our environment and industrialise our countryside. Not to mention the fact it will accelerate the climate emergency exactly at a time we urgently need to end our dependency on oil and gas. The government believes that paying a community to accept fracking is the same as consent. Now ministers are planning to bypass the democratic process altogether and ignore the views of local residents that have stood firmly against fracking in the past. We need to show them this is wrong. Our local communities have rejected fracking time and time again. We want the final say on what happens in our local area, and we won’t take no for an answer.

The Oxfordshire local government pension scheme which, provides pensions for over 66,000 public sector workers in the county, has investments in fossil fuel companies including over £20m in Shell despite the county council having declared a Climate Emergency back in 2019. Scientists tell us that to avoid extreme disasters, the majority of known reserves need to stay in the ground. Yet these companies are investing in new fossil fuel exploration and development projects which jeopardize any chance that global heating will be limited to 1.5°C, threatening everyone's security and livelihood. Divestment sends a clear message to the fossil fuel sector and removes any social license to continue their dangerous business plans.

“Clean” Energy Security? The raw material for nuclear is uranium which can be found in in the UK in the Orkneys but which our government buys from, for example Kazakhstan where it is largely mined by leaching out the uranium from the rock using massive amounts of fresh water and chemicals. “Clean” Carbon footprint? Nuclear is at least the third highest carbon emitter after coal-fired plants and natural gas. As uranium becomes more scarce more energy and chemicals are needed to get the uranium out of the ground. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority have calculated their carbon footprint for 2019/20 as 1,046,950 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). This does not include operation of nuclear reactors or include the building of Hinkley Point C with the biggest pour of concrete in the UK ever. The nuclear and fossil fuel industry are mutually intertwined. The biggest gas plant being constructed in the UK right now is at Sellafield, home to 80 percent of the UK's existing nuclear waste which needs to be kept cool. The heating effect of discharges to the atmosphere and sea and also the use of water as a coolant for reactors and nuclear wastes are all contributing to ocean temperature rise and climate change. An honest description of Nuclear would be : Radioactive Fossil Fuel by proxy. “Clean” Radioactive Emissions Radioactive emissions occur at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle from the mining of uranium to enrichment, to fuel manufacture, to operation of the reactors, to the “disposal” of nuclear wastes. These emissions occur both routinely and accidentally and have already resulted in large swathes of the world’s land and oceans becoming irreversibly polluted with man-made radioactive isotopes. "Clean" and Healthy? Radiation can damage the DNA in our cells. High doses of radiation can cause Acute Radiation Syndrome or Cutaneous Radiation Injuries. There is no such thing as a “safe dose” of radiation The “Clean Energy Technology Park” just 3.9 miles from the centre of Preston is planning an incinerator to burn intermediate level radioactive wastes from across Europe. This would result in daily plumes of chemical and radio-toxic airborne fine particle emissions blowing accross Preston City Centre. We call for the word “Clean” to be replaced by - Nuclear - at the "Clean Energy Technology Park".

Millions of people from across the UK could be owed hundreds of pounds in refunds from their energy provider. The refunds are linked to direct debit payments on fuel costs, which often result in customers overpaying in summer months. And some suppliers are using the money to fund "otherwise unsustainable business practices." It’s just not good enough. That’s why energy watchdog Ofgem is consulting on introducing an auto-refund system in which consumers are automatically refunded on a yearly basis rather than building up credit on their accounts. If thousands sign the petition, Ofgem will know how serious the public are taking this issue, and even the big energy companies could change the way they do things before they are forced to.

Building new dirty power directly contradicts the government's legally binding target to reduce emissions to net-zero by 2050. Gas-fired power is a major contributor to the UK's greenhouse gas emissions; we must move away from this fuel if we stand any chance of tackling the climate crisis and improving air quality. The government is already being sued by ClientEarth over the decision. We need to build support for the legal case and show people want clean power instead.

This hike is certain to hit innovation and investment in the UK’s growing solar and battery storage market. Not to mention the vital progress on decarbonising heat, which according to the Spring Statement is a strong focus for this government. There could not be a more contradictory step following the declaration of a climate emergency by parliament.