The energy price cap will rise to £3549 from 1st October 2022. That’s an 80% increase in utility prices which will mean your average punter will be paying circa £300 a month. Because it’s called a ‘price cap’, it doesn’t mean £3549 is a cap on price. If you live in a big house and use more energy, utility bills could be considerably more than £3549 and if you live in a small, well-insulated utility bills could be less. And just because the 80% increase isn’t supposed to start until 1st October, the energy regulator Ofgem has said some companies may start charging extra before then to ‘spread the cost’. Phew! That’s all right then. How could things get any worse? Well, like this.
The consultancy Cornwall Insight predicts the cap will again rise, this time to £4,649 a year for the first three months of next year, then to £5,341 for April to June 2023. But try not to worry too much if you cannot afford to pay these colossal increases. OFGEM says ‘suppliers must work with you to agree on a payment plan you can afford’. So if you cannot afford to pay £3549 for your utilities, your provider will have to agree to find a method of payment which you can afford to pay £3549 a year which you can’t afford to pay, possibly by way of a pre-payment meter which will cost you…er…2% extra. Or, as a backstop, you could be offered emergency AKA temporary credit in order to put you in debt.
But again, don’t worry, announces this week’s chancellor Nadhim Zahawi. He says he understands that this will “cause stress and anxiety for many people” but that (undefined) “help is coming” and no one will be more worried than multimillionaire Zahawi, who was once so worried about the price of electricity he claimed parliamentary expenses to keep his horses warm. Thousands of vulnerable people die each winter from the effects of the cold so allowing even more to die because they can’t afford their bills whilst his horses relax next to a boiling radiator will not be a good look for him.
Keir Starmer and Labour have got this exactly right: freeze the energy price cap. Yes, I know that means that everyone will benefit, including very rich people like Zadawi, but it will be much easier and ultimately cheaper than means testing everything. A few hundred quid to cover £3549 will be neither here nor there. It would be a blister plaster for a compound fracture. But it’s very clear that whatever they do will be a panic measure taken only when the wretched new prime minister Liz Truss enters number 10. Anything short of a price cap freeze will be a disaster with inflation already at 10.3% and heading towards 20%. Even the comfortable middle classes will feel the coming shock when a soaring CPI and rocketing utility bills collide.
In their woeful campaigns to become the next Tory leader, Truss and Brand Rishi Sunak have spent their time attacking so-called ‘wokery’, Emmanuel Macron, the police, our basic human rights and of course benefit claimants, all of whom are, in their cock-eyed brains, responsible for the mess we are in and not a government which has been in office for over 12 years.
Don’t forget: the £3549 is an average figure. Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis fears that some people, particularly the severely disabled and many senior citizens, will run up bills of around £10,000 because of the need to keep warm and operate critical life-saving devices. Thousands will die if nothing is done. The ultimate price of raising utility bill prices. And the new price cap, which I repeat is not a cap, represents 37% of the state pension.
For once, it is time for the Conservatives to stop playing politics and focus on doing the right thing, which is to freeze the energy price cap for at least the next six months and free millions from the “stress and anxiety” that Zahawi at least acknowledges people are feeling. Words alone will not be enough.
