Ed Miliband says Labour will ask Brits to “get a heat pump, not a gas boiler”. (Image: Getty)
Ed Miliband says the government will ask Brits to “get a heat pump, not a gas boiler” despite the latter being over three times the price.
The Energy Secretary delivered the warning following a sneaky boiler tax passing through Parliament on Wednesday. The move will reportedly push prices up, yet Mr Miliband has claimed heat pumps may as always be more expensive.
During a parliamentary committee, the Labour minister was quizzed on whether Labour will abandon their suggested ban on new gas boilers by 2035. He said: “We can say to people you need to get a heat pump, not a gas boiler, potentially, at some point in the future.
“But I’m very wary of saying we’re going to stop people having gas boilers at a point when we can’t guarantee heat pumps are going to be cheaper for people.”
The average cost of a heat pump hovers around the £10,000 mark, while a gas boiler costs just £3,000, the Telegraph reports. With high electricity prices, running it will also be higher.
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Heat pumps are 3x more expensive than a gas boiler. (Image: Getty)
Mr Miliband added: “We must proceed in a way that we can say to people they will be better off in the transition.
“I do not want to be in a position where we say to people ‘you must go down this road’ and then people say – rightly – ‘you have made me worse off’.”
The comments follow some 346 Labour MPs voting to allow the Government to impose extra costs on families who install new gas boilers.
Labour threw its support behind the Clean Heat Market Mechanism (CHMM), which gives the Energy Secretary the power to fine boiler manufacturers for not selling enough heat pump.
The CHMM will require 4% of boiler manufacturers’ sales to be heat pumps or for them to pay a charge for each missed installation. Manufacturers are likely to pass the costs onto customers installing gas boilers.
However, the government announced measures in November to make it more affordable for households to get a heat pump – an extra £30million has been committed to this financial year’s pot to give households £7,500 off the cost of buying one.
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The Energy Secretary’s comments comes after a new boiler tax was passed. (Image: Getty)
Andrew Bowie, the shadow energy minister, said the costs being passed on to customers was “inevitable”, despite the first proposing the boiler tax in 2021.
He said: “Far from having consumers in the mind’s eye, this is a Government that has already shown flagrant disregard for consumers.
“Now they are asking us to support the Secretary of State for Energy, who clearly has no interest in the in this country, to have unfettered power to interfere in the price of people’s boilers.
“The British people will once again be forced to pick up the bill for this Government’s ideological approach to net zero.”