Tim Farron

I will not. That would be a disaster for our economy, our communities and our young people. Far from bringing down energy bills, it would make us even more reliant on imported fossil fuels, which are expensive. Energy bills skyrocketed in the past few years because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That shows what a truly terrible idea this is. What happened to the Conservative party being the party of national security? That idea is long gone, too, alongside its commitment to sound money. Putin would profit, while British families and pensioners struggle. The whole argument being put forward by the Conservative party, and by our habitually absent colleagues on the fourth row back, is that bills are too high because we are investing too much in renewable power. They say that we should stop investing, scrap our climate commitments, and bills will magically come down, but it is just not true. It is not the price of renewables that is pushing up bills; generating electricity from solar or wind is now significantly cheaper than gas, even when we factor in extra costs for back-up power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. However, people are not seeing the benefit of cheap renewable power, because wholesale electricity prices are still tied to the price of gas, even though half of all our electricity now comes from renewables, compared with just 30% from gas. That is because the wholesale price is set by the most expensive fuel in the mix, which in the UK is almost always gas. That is not the case in some other countries in Europe such as Spain and France.