Woman looking at advertisements in an estate agents window, July 20, 2023
CAMPAIGNERS have blasted a lack of regulation in the housing market that leaves people trapped with no choice but to hand over their wages to landlords.
Today’s condemnation came as new figures revealed that the number of first-time buyers had plunged to its lowest level in a decade.
Figures issued by the Yorkshire Building Society showed that the number of first-time buyers in the mortgage market in 2023 stood at 290,000, shrinking by a fifth compared with 2022.
The decrease in first-time buyers followed a string of now-paused interest hikes first made by the Bank of England in December 2021, which pushed up borrowing costs, including mortgages.
The leading trade union body has slammed government policy for benefiting corporate profiteering at the expense of household bills, leading renewed calls to nationalise the energy sector after the 5% energy price cap rise.
Households will be ‘hammered even harder’ in 2024 the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has said, as the Ofgem price cap rise came into effect from January 1, which will see households across the country face a 5% increase in their energy bill.
It has led to further warnings from charities about struggling households facing another cold start to the year and renewed calls for government support to help households struggling with their energy bills.
“No one should struggle to get by in one of the richest countries in the world,” said TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak.
“But 13 years of wage stagnation and cuts to social security have left millions badly exposed to sky-high bills this winter.”
With energy bills already 50% higher than two years ago, Nowak said the price cap rise will only “hammer households even harder in the coming year”.
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Warm This Winter, a coalition of 50 leading UK charities, warned of the effects the government’s inaction at tackling the energy crisis will have across services.
“Failure to avert this cold homes crisis will lead to pressure on the NHS, a mental health catastrophe and additional winter deaths caused by living in cold damp homes,” said Fiona Waters, Warm This Winter spokesperson.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is being condemned for his ‘barefaced lie’ after claiming, incorrectly, that the government had met its pledge to clear the backlog of so-called legacy asylum claims.
The prime minister posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the Home Office had dealt with 112,000 “legacy cases” – relating to claims made before June 2022 – by the end of last year.
However, thousands of asylum cases are still awaiting a final decision, with Downing Street forced to admit that 4,500 “complex cases” remain outstanding. That means that the government has not cleared the “legacy” backlog of pre-June 2022 asylum claims.
Furthermore, the Home Office has revealed that there are more than 98,000 asylum applications still awaiting a decision, largely consisting of claims made since June 2022. 17,000 claims have also been withdrawn by the Home Office, with Yvette Cooper saying that the government has ‘no idea where those people are’.
To add to the humiliation for the PM, his post on X was community noted with the message “the backlog has not been cleared” and a link to a BBC report confirming the target has not been met.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
“The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” said one campaigner. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts.”
The year 2023 was marked by weather events that made it increasingly clear that the Earth has entered what United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called the “era of global boiling,” with wildfires and prolonged heatwaves impacting millions of people and scientists confirming their suffering was the direct result of fossil fuel extraction and planetary heating.
But for the world’s five largest oil giants, the year marked record profits and the approval of several major new fossil fuel projects, allowing the companies to lavish their shareholders with payouts that are expected to exceed $100 billion—signaling that executives have little anxiety that demand for their products will fall, said one economist.
The companies—BP, Shell, Chevron,ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies—spent $104 billion on shareholder payouts in 2022, and are expected to reward investors with even more in buybacks and dividends for 2023, The Guardian reported.
Shell announced plans in November to pay investors at least $23 billion—more than six times the amount it planned to spend on renewable energy projects—while BP promised shareholders a 10% raise in dividends and Chevron could exceed the $75 billion stock buyback it announced early last year.
Alice Harrison, a campaigner for Global Witness, noted that fossil fuel shareholders will be enjoying their paydays as households across Europe struggle with fuel poverty and the world faces the rising threat of climate disasters brought on by the industry.
“The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” Harrison told The Guardian. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts. Yet again millions of families won’t be able to afford to heat their homes this winter, and countries around the world will continue to suffer the extreme weather events of climate collapse. This is the fossil fuel economy, and it’s rigged in favor of the rich.”
It’s a happy new year for oil company shareholders enjoying massive dividends. The 5 largest majors are distributing over $100 billion. Not so happy a new year for British energy consumers who are subject to a new round of price increases, plunging more households into poverty. https://t.co/g3i4Zdoxo7
In 2023 campaigners intensified their demands for accountability from the oil, gas, and coal industries, and as of last month had successfully pressured more than 1,600 universities, pension funds, and other institutions to divest from fossil fuels. In the U.S., provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been touted as the “largest investment in climate and energy in American history,” went into effect.
But Dieter Helm, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford, The Guardian that if the industry were truly fearful of policymakers phasing out fossil fuel extraction and expediting a transition to renewable sources, they would be spending far less on new projects and shareholder payouts.
“For this to be the case you would have to believe that the energy transition is happening, and that demand for fossil fuels is going to fall,” Helm told The Guardian.
In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden infuriated climate campaigners by approving the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, which could lead to roughly 280 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions. His administration also included in a debt limit deal language that would expedite the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which could emit the equivalent of more than 89 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, while the U.K. government greenlit a massive oil drilling field in the North Sea and French company TotalEnergies continued to construct the 900-mile-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which would transport up to 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
“These companies are investing a huge amount in new projects, and they’re handing out bigger dividends because they are confident that they’re going to make big returns,” Helm said. “And when we look at the state of our current climate progress, who’s to say they’re wrong?”
Climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate pointed out that the shareholder paydays are expected following a deal on a loss and damage fund at the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, aimed at helping developing countries to fight the climate emergency. That fund was hailed as “historic” and included a commitment of $700 million from wealthy countries—a sum that is expected to be dwarfed by fossil fuel investors’ profits.
Leaders at COP28 agreed to a “historic” $700 million in loss and damage funding.
Meanwhile BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies are about to reward their investors with record payouts of more than $100 billion. https://t.co/LRIrH4mFmz
“They have picked people’s pockets, fueled inflation and pollution, and deepened poverty,” U.K. House of Lords member and Tax Justice Network co-founder Prem Sikka said of the oil giants. “Governments do nothing to end their monopolistic control. Need to break-up this cartel.”
