Jeremy Hunt has announced a series of big changes to the UK Government's spending policies in an address to the nation on live TV on the morning of Monday, October 17. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed that several of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng's flagship policies will either be tweaked or abandoned, including a big change to the energy price guarantee which was announced less than a month ago.
The guarantee effectively replaces the old price cap and will mean that the average home will pay £2,500 for energy per year. This will still go ahead, but the policy (which the Chancellor described as the "landmark policy" and the "biggest single expense" of the mini budget) will only continue in its current form until April 2023.
At that point, the policy will be reviewed by the Treasury, with the aim being to reduce the cost of the scheme to the taxpayer. The exact nature of this review wasn't made clear, but the Chancellor indicated support for businesses would be targeted to those most affected, and with the idea of "better incentivis[ing] energy efficiency," adding that it would "not be responsible" to keep exposing public finances to the volatility of gas prices internationally.
