Energy bills: Britons urged to pull together to prevent ‘cost of lives crisis’
Britons must develop a spirit of “radical generosity” to prevent lives being lost because of soaring gas and electricity bills this winter, the head of the World Energy Council (WEC) has warned.
Angela Wilkinson, the secretary general of the WEC, said that failure to get communities across Britain pulling together over the colder months would “move [this] from a cost of living crisis to a cost of lives crisis”.
The WEC is a nonprofit industry network with more than 3,000 member organisations in about 90 countries, including government bodies, private and state corporations and academics.
Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, last week announced plans to freeze energy bills expected to cost taxpayers more than £150bn, in one of the largest government interventions to shield households from sky-high gas and electricity costs.
But Wilkinson argued that while “pain relief” from the government over bills was needed, citizens needed to play their part. She said: “It should be a self-organised response to this energy crisis, not just a top-down government response.
“We shouldn’t expect governments to tell us what to do all the time. Society can better prepare and we can organise for it. In the second world war, there were community kitchens, which provided food.
“Now schools are providing food for kids. So there’s not just a shortage of community investment. There’s also a shortage of kindness and reciprocity. This is a time for radical generosity in the UK.”
Charities and consumer champions have warned that individuals taking action alone will not be enough to prevent millions from the risk of poverty this winter, given the dramatic scale of the increase in living costs. Inflation has reached the highest level since the early
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