MOST Brits want polluting oil and gas giants to be forced to use their record-breaking profits to pay for the climate damage they are causing, a new poll published today reveals.

Some 63 per cent want Tory ministers to tax major energy firms and transfer wealth to poorer nations in the global South already suffering the worst impacts of global warming, according to the Christian Aid survey.

A “loss and damage fund” was agreed at the landmark Cop27 climate summit last year, but details on which countries will pay into it and which will receive the vital support are yet to be agreed. 

The charity’s poll, which consulted more than 2,000 adults across Britain, came after oil and gas company Shell followed BP in announcing eye-watering profits for the first quarter of this year.

The firm raked in a whopping £1.4 billion more than expected in just three months, it confirmed today after BP said earlier this week that it had banked £500 million more than forecast in the same period.

Between them, the British multinationals pocketed a barely conceivable £11.7bn between January and March alone as unions accuse bosses of “rampant corporate profiteering” amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ongoing war has massively inflated global energy market prices but left extraction costs for oil and gas unaffected, leading to ballooning profit margins. 

Shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband slammed the enormous profit hauls as the “unearned, unexpected windfalls of war”. 

With under-pressure families facing soaring energy bills, 40-year-high double-digit inflation and plummeting take-home pay, the ex-Labour leader repeated his demands for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to expand his limited energy windfall tax to freeze council tax and address other mounting costs. 

According to Christian Aid, women and people aged 35 and over are the most likely to support an energy levy which would help more vulnerable nations.

The charity’s chief executive Patrick Watt said: “The people who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are facing the gravest climate shocks, and the damage that causes to harvests, homes and human life.

“Record profits by fossil fuel companies like Shell and BP should be a wake-up call, and spur real accountability for the damage they are causing.

“That’s not just Christian Aid’s view, it’s the view of an overwhelming majority of the British public.

“The UK government should be ensuring that major polluters meet their moral responsibility to repair the damage they have caused to the climate.”

Unite the union leader Sharon Graham blasted bumper energy profits as “one of the corporate scandals of our times which is practically untouched by Rishi Sunak’s so-called windfall tax.”

The ex-chancellor’s “energy profits levy” — introduced under Labour pressure last May — included a massive tax break for energy firms which amounts to a £11bn handout to bosses and shareholders, Unite has warned. 

Ms Graham added: “It’s time to consider something way beyond a windfall tax. Unite research has found that if the UK had a Norwegian tax take, we would be earning at least £30bn more from the North Sea than we are now.

“Not taking any action against ‘big oil’ means the profiteering plundering will continue without end.”

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak called for an end to the “energy racket.

“These sky-high profits beg the question — will the government ever have the backbone to tax the energy giants properly?

“We could all have lower bills if government taxed excessive profits, introduced a social tariff and created public ownership of new clean power.”

And Scottish Greens MSP Mark Ruskell said: “These are climate wrecking profits, taking us another step closer to environmental breakdown — we can’t go on like this.”