UK:BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown has continued his political fightback with a £1 billion (€1.25 billion) package of measures agreed with energy companies aimed at helping people to cope with soaring gas and electricity bills, writes Frank MillarLondon Editor.
The measures include a freeze on this year's bills for half a million consumers; free cavity wall and loft insulation for pensioners and poorer households; and increased cold weather payments for pensioners, disabled people and unemployed families should temperatures fall below zero for seven consecutive days.
Reaction among consumer groups, however, was at best muted in response to what a spokesman for Help the Aged described as "a flimsy and failing package" that was itself lacking "energy".
Derek Simpson, the leader of Britain's biggest trade union, attacked the government's failure to impose a windfall tax on the energy companies, saying it was "ridiculous to believe" the measures announced yesterday represented a partial or complete solution.
For the Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, Vince Cable described the package as "eminently sensible, but very, very modest", while adding it was not clear the energy companies would actually pay for it. Mr Brown has urged the companies not to pass on the costs to consumers. However David Porter, chief executive of the Association of Electricity Producers, warned they might not be able to avoid it.
"Someone has to pay for the green agenda," he told the BBC's World at Oneprogramme.
Continuing the countdown to Mr Brown's big conference test in Manchester, which begins tomorrow week, Conservative spokesman Chris Grayling said the announcement was "fine as far as it went", but claimed the government's heavily trailed response to the mounting economic crisis was proving to be "a damp squib".
With the EU having joined those predicting that Britain will fall into recession this year, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, said "it would not be surprising" if he had to write to the chancellor next week confirming that inflation has once again exceeded its 2 per cent target.
A pre-conference Populus poll, meanwhile, carried the grim warning for Mr Brown that even if the economy improves dramatically in the next year or two, only 31 per cent of voters think that will improve Labour's chances of winning the next election.
Sixty-seven per cent of those surveyed agreed there were "many other reasons why it is time for a change".