So much for Osborne helping the common man by keeping the price of fuel down. It seems he didn’t follow the likely possibilities through when he inflicted a £2bn tax on North Sea Oil.
According to latest news bulletins, Tens of thousands of jobs in the UK will go as a result of a windfall tax on North Sea oil producers announced in the Budget, the industry has warned.
Mike Tholen, economics director of Oil and Gas UK, said the change would also damage long-term energy security.
"What you see is the UK's reputation as a global player in oil and gas industry falter because of this. Many companies from abroad are looking at whether to invest in the UK, to help us get the new oil and gas reserves out of our waters. What we see is that image yet again shattered because of the tax change."
He said the chancellor had previously promised stability: "Some five years since the last big tax hit on our industry, investment had begun to pick up. Our big concern is that investment will collapse again as a result of what he's done."
"We will see jobs go and we will see technology lost, and we will undoubtedly see our nation less well off when it comes to energy security in the years ahead.
"As an industry, at the minute we are responsible for employing nearly half a million people across the UK, and there will be tens of thousands of those who will not now have jobs in the future because of this."
Mark Hanafin, managing director of Centrica Energy, said the tax hike "could have a chilling impact on future investment in the North Sea".
But a Treasury spokesman said: "We do not expect this tax change to have a significant effect on production and investment - and therefore on jobs - in the coming years as profits are expected to remain high because of the oil price.
"Even with this change, average post-tax profits per barrel are forecast to be higher in the next five years than the last five."
If ever you needed evidence that this government doesn’t know what it’s doing, it is here. Now we have a chancellor who will cause devastation to another industry (His colleague Iain Duncan Smith has previously caused chaos in the welfare to work sector). Over the coming months we can expect to see thousands of people made redundant – and why? Because Osborne wanted to give people 5p off fuel .. forgetting we already suffer over 80p a litre taxation on the stuff anyway.
Even his measly 1p off fuel didn’t work – the oil companies put the price up hours before the Budget, so when he reduced it, the price just went back to how it was at the start of the working day! There was no saving.
It is time for Osborne to go. He is incompetent and worse, his pathetic attempts at economic planning are causing chaos to the lives of thousands. How much more do we have to suffer under these Tories before they accept the will of the people and leave office in disgrace?
Tomorrow, thousands will march to make this sooner rather than later – join us. March against the cuts, march for jobs and march because it is the right thing to do.
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