Commenting on today’s (Thursday) profits by Centrica, TUC General
Secretary Paul Nowak said:
“Britain's energy market is broken.
“While millions of families struggle to heat their homes, firms
like Centrica are raking in monster profits.
“It is time to bring energy retail companies into public
ownership.
“Privatisation has been a disaster for hard-pressed households.
The only real winners have been shareholders who have creamed off
hundreds of millions in dividends.
“That's why the TUC is calling for the government to set up a
public energy company to lower bills.”
Centrica
profits "undeserved” says IPPR
The UK’s leading progressive thinktank, IPPR, has responded to
the announcement that Centrica has made £3.3 billion in profits
in 2022 (up 350% since 2021) and announced a new round of share
buybacks totalling £300 million.
Dr George Dibb, head of the Centre for Economic Justice
at IPPR, said:
”These scandalous profits are undeserved and come directly from
the pocket of bill-payers. We all know that wholesale energy
prices have been sky-high for the past year, but that’s no reason
that gas suppliers should be making higher profits on the back of
higher bills. These profits, which are then being transferred
directly to shareholders via buybacks and dividends, are a direct
transfer away from bill-payers during a cost of living crisis. It
is time to introduce a tax on share buybacks and use those
revenues to support public services.”
A recent report published by IPPR and Common Wealth
argued that share buybacks are a direct cash transfer away from
households struggling to pay bills, via energy company profits,
to already-wealthy shareholders. The report,
Buy Back Better, contained the
following analysis:
-
Share buybacks channel profits from companies to shareholders by
increasing the value of shareholders’ stock.
- FTSE
100 companies have announced £55 billion of share buybacks in
2022.
-
President Biden has recently introduced a 1 per cent tax on share
buybacks to help alleviate the cost-of-living crisis in America
and has proposed increasing that to 4 per cent.
- A 25
per cent tax on share buy backs could raise £13.5 billion a
year.
