THERE is a noticeable shortening of the evenings, and it will not be long until a drop in temperature has us all feeling the cold in our homes again and needing the lights on at 4pm to see what we are doing.

Seasonal affective disorder can have a serious impact on our mood and happiness but the change in the season also has a massive impact on our energy consumption and therefore our bills. The cost of utilities may not be on the front pages anymore but they are most certainly at the forefront of my constituents’ minds and at the top of their list of concerns.

Heating and lighting your home isn’t a luxury, it is a necessity that far too many people are having to cut back on due to extortionate costs and the lack of government intervention or support.

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The price cap may have fallen slightly but with the support payments no longer in place people will find they are having to spend more, despite the actual cost coming down, and all this during a period where our other household bills are going up.

On a weekly basis I receive calls and emails from constituents who are suffering the consequences of these cutbacks. Damp and cold homes are much more likely to suffer from black mould, which is extremely bad for people’s health and can have a lifelong impact on an individual’s wellbeing.

When this is taken together with the general poor standard of housing that many people find themselves trapped in, you have a situation where your home, the place you should feel safe and be able to bring up your family, is actually making you sick. This is made all the worse by the fact that we are an energy-rich nation which produces the majority of our electricity by renewable means.

Not only do the people of Scotland not share in that wealth, many actually pay more than those in England where our energy is exported to. How can it be fair that we produce energy and require more of it due to climate and hours of daylight, yet are charged more?

At the SNP National Conference, I will be supporting a motion by my fellow MP Chris Law and Councillor Siobhan Tolland on bringing energy back into public control.

This motion has incorporated part of my own, which was about exploring energy as a human right and how that could be implemented in an independent nation with nationalised or locally owned energy production and distribution.

It makes no sense that the cost of your electricity bill is pegged to the wholesale price of gas when the vast majority is produced through renewables. And if those renewables were nationally or community owned then there would be no extractive profits being taken from the pockets of the least well-off.

The argument against big energy is the argument against much of how the neoliberal society works. Private companies sell us something produced using our own resources at ridiculously hiked-up prices – and we have no option but to buy it to survive.

I can feel the rage rising in me as I write this. We should all be angry, and we should stay angry! There is no tinkering to fix that system, it needs completely overhauled.

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The work and campaigning I have done on prepayment meters and so-called “self-disconnection” is a stark reminder of the situation many find themselves in. When their money runs out, so does their energy It is unconscionable that in a wealthy, energy-rich country, we would tolerate the idea of children, elderly people or anyone else sitting in a cold dark house because they simply cannot afford to top up the meter.

It is issues like this that are most important to people right now and it’s issues like this where we have to make sure we are standing up for the people of Scotland at every opportunity.

One of the lessons we have learned from the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election is that people care most about the issues that impact their daily lives – it’s not that they’re not interested in independence but we need to connect the dots between independence and our routes to solving these big issues.

When we make and win the case on how we improve people’s lives, we make the case for, and win, our independence.

In this column, Anne McLaughlin originally wrote: "Not only do the people of Scotland not share in that wealth, we actually pay more than those in England where our energy is exported to."

We would like to clarify that many people and areas in Scotland see some of the highest energy bills in the UK.

The three constituencies set to see the highest increase in household energy bills this winter in the UK are all in Scotland. SNP constituencies also have the biggest increase at £54 more, compared to £32 for Labour, £19 for LibDem and £17 for Conservative constituencies.

People across northern and southern Scotland pay more across all payment methods than the Midlands, South East England and London for everything except gas.

Scotland also has one of the highest standing charges in the UK for electricity, with only North Wales and Mersey higher.

The UK's coldest regions also spend more of their weekly budget on heating than properties in London. ONS figures reported on in 2022 showed homes in Scotland pay 40% to 50% more compared to London, while the figure for Northern Ireland was 50%.