‘If nothing happens, it will be too late’. That’s the dire warning from an academic I spoke to recently in Aberdeen about Britain’s energy independence. He’s right to worry: last year, 44 per cent of the energy used in the UK last year was imported. This month’s Budget could be one of our final chances to save the UK from becoming increasingly reliant on energy from overseas, and to improve the lot of Britain’s suffering energy firms.

One quick solution Rachel Reeves should reach for is scrapping the Energy Profits Levy (EPL). A windfall tax brought in by the Conservative government in 2022, the EPL was intended as a temporary tax on oil and gas in the face of a large spike in energy company profits, but the Labour government has done three things to make it worse. First, it put the rate

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