SIR – A report about cold homes and health commissioned by the Friends of the Earth may come as a shock to today’s medical professionals and environmentalists. But people with an ounce of commonsense have always known that cold weather causes deaths and ill-health, especially among the elderly.

The report is merely an attempt to make FoE look like it is concerned. But their concern is hollow. It suggests the elderly and poor and working families should have to wait for a handout or for someone to install insulation in their home.

The real problem is high energy costs – the result of the failure of Governments and opposition parties to create forward-looking energy policies, and their complete surrender to environmental pressure groups.

It is sheer hypocrisy for the Friends of the Earth to highlight the human cost of high energy prices when it is a situation they have helped create.

I and my colleagues have been pointing out the terrible cost of high energy prices and environmentalism for years.

With energy prices set to rise again, and the UK’s Climate Change Committee proposing further price rises in the future, we will shortly see this country’s daft green policies have created a problem far worse than climate change was ever going to cause us.

Godfrey Bloom , UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, Wressle, Selby