Why Labour must not repeat SNP false promises to cut Scottish energy bills

The very first issue I raised with Keir Starmer after he became Prime Minister in 2024 was the scandal of “constraint payments”, by which wind farms such as Viking in Shetland are paid not to generate electricity, to avoid overloading the power grid.

It has been utterly maddening for islanders, living with some of the highest levels of fuel poverty in the country, to see these enormous wind turbines sitting idle – which is why I will raise half a cheer at the government’s belated plans to tackle this injustice. Ministers have announced a trial programme for suppliers to offer discounted power to people during these so-called constraint periods, so that the extra electricity can be used rather than wasted. So far, so good – but what matters now is the execution.

We have seen before what happens when a politician wants to make a splash about cutting energy bills, without making the effort to ensure that the plans add up.

In 2017, at SNP party conference, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon promised the Scottish people – and by extension, the thousands of people in the Northern Isles living in fuel poverty – that her government would create a publicly-owned energy company, which would reduce our bills. The idea, she told us, was “simple” – and it was to be up and running by the spring of 2021.

You might have noticed that no such public energy company exists; the promise was quietly abandoned in the autumn of 2021. To add insult to injury, when the energy crisis hit our country less than a year later in 2022, following Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Nicola Sturgeon again popped up to tell us that, actually, the energy company that she had promised would not have been of any use in cutting bills anyway. Well, that’s alright then.

It was a slap in the face to Scots struggling with their heating bills – and goes to show how important it is that our governments live up to their promises on energy. Either Sturgeon’s energy company plan was never achievable – so the SNP should not have told people that it was – or it was achievable, but the SNP were too incompetent to achieve it. Neither option paints the nationalists in a positive light. Labour ministers should take note.

We are still some ways from having clarity on how, exactly, this UK government scheme will work – and how much it may or may not save people in the affected areas. We do not even know yet which companies will or will not be participating in the constraint scheme.

We need that detail, and sooner rather than later. The energy price cap will keep electricity and gas prices down until July, but it will not be all that long until bigger bills are landing on the doorsteps as winter returns. When the weather turns, we had better have these answers.

Whatever the final shape of the constraint payment plan, what my constituents rightly expect is something that will make a meaningful dent in the cost of their energy. That is the standard by which Labour will be judged.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland