The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has sacked a Conservative MP following her vote to cut VAT on energy bills.
The Conservative Party has removed the whip (ejected from the Parliamentary Party) Anne Marie Morris, the Conservative MP for Newton Abbot in Devon, after she voted against the government’s official position to remove the 5 per cent tax on domestic fuel supply on the 11th of January 2022.
Morris was the only Conservative MP to vote against the government and for the opposition bill in the House of Commons, it being defeated by 319 votes to 229.
In a statement on her website, Morris said the removal of her whip was “disappointing”, especially as she said her vote was in “the best interests of my [her] constituents”.
Morris declined to apologise for rebelling against the government, saying that she believed removing tax on household energy bills is “the right thing to do” at a time “when the cost of living is rising”.
The stance of Prime Minister Boris Johnson to sack 12-year veteran MP Morris is acutely hypocritical, as throughout the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, Johnson repeatedly said that if Britain left the EU Brits would “be able to scrap this unfair and damaging [energy] tax”.
The European Union requires all member states to have a 5 per cent minimum tax on domestic fuel supply. However, despite Johnson continuously promising Brits that leaving the EU would result in “taking back control” and allow the scrapping of the heating energy tax, since taking office in 2019 he has not delivered on this.
Instead of seeing the “lower” fuel bills “for everyone” that Johnson promised, Brits have been hit with higher bills, with UK households expecting to see an increase of as much as 56 per cent in their energy bills by April 2022.
These soaring energy prices have been met with widespread concern, and Brits were even told to “cuddle” their “pets” as a “cost-effective” way of keeping warm if they couldn’t afford to put the heating on by an energy supplier. It later apologised for the advice after backlash.
Charities have warned that an estimated 6 million British households could be plunged into fuel poverty as a consequence of the energy price inflation.
In the face of these troubling circumstances, and also despite Johnson’s earlier promises, the Conservatives are still opposed to the cutting of VAT on household energy bills.
The motion proposed by the Labour Party estimated that the cost of removing this levy on homeowners’ bills would ‘cost’ around £2 billion in lost tax revenue. In comparison, the Conservative government’s failed ‘Track and Trace’ app cost the taxpayer £37 billion.
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, Greg Hands lambasted the Labour Party and their bill during closing remarks before the vote.
“Labour Members do not have a plan [to solve the energy crisis]. A four-page motion is not a plan. This is a student union tactic, which they rehearsed well during the Brexit years. I thought that the departure of the right hon. Member for Islington North [Jeremy Corbyn] as leader of the Labour party might herald a return to serious Opposition politics”, he said.