Daily Mail drops GWPF green tax claim
Is the Daily Mail rolling back on its “green taxes” claims?
Since the paper launched their campaign last month against “hidden green charges on soaring fuel bills”, they’ve used as the basis of their attack the figure of £200 per year added onto the average domestic bill. That figure, as we reported here , was based on unsourced claims made by Dr Benny Peiser from Lord Lawson’s climate skeptic thinktank, the GWPF.
But, in an article on Friday , the Mail dropped that £200 claim in favour of Ofgem’s estimate of £100, or 10% per year on energy bills.
Peiser, when challenged by the Full Fact website, referred to figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which in 2010 published detailed information on the impact of green policies on energy bills (PDF).
After accounting for savings to households from reduced consumption, DECC calculates the gross increase to household bills from green measures in 2010 is around four percent. That is clearly much lower than the 15-20 percent used by Peiser to reach his £200 claim, and lower than the 10% calculated by Ofgem on which the Mail’s new £100 claim is based.
But whilst the Mail appear to have switched from a GWPF inspired figure to citing Ofgem, Peiser, Lawson and Lord Turnbull from the GWPF are all quoted in the latest article:
“Benny Peiser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, called for hidden climate change levies to be slashed. He said: ‘If Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has his way, Britons will be forced to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £100billion in the next 20 years.”
The piece even includes a rag out image of a previous Mail headline claiming “Green targets to cost every household £500 a year.”
Whilst the Mail may have quietly acknowledged the fiction of the £200 figure they had previously splashed across their front page, it doesn’t seem to be distancing itself from the source.