Industry can’t wait any longer for a fix to its energy crisis. Ministers should get a move on

Every act of deindustrialisation in the UK, such as the closure of the blast furnace at Port Talbot steelworks, highlights the UK’s high industrial energy prices. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

In the long list of budget submissions from the business world, here’s one the chancellor is probably disinclined to smile upon.

Make UK, the body representing manufacturers, would like the government to expand its energy support scheme – the one unveiled in June as part of the shiny new industrial strategy – from 7,000 firms to 115,000 businesses. And it would like the promised savings in electricity bills to be backdated to April this year; as scheduled, the so-called British industrial competitiveness scheme, or BICS, is due to arrive only in April 2027.