Liz Truss has been blasted by a fact-checking charity for falsely claiming no family will pay more than £2,500 on their energy bills.
In a round of local media interviews defending her budget, she told BBC Radio Kent she was “making sure that nobody is paying fuel bills of more than £2,500”.
And she told listeners in Nottingham she was “making sure people across this country are not facing energy bills of more than £2,500.”
But the £2,500 is only the the average yearly gas and electricity bill under her two-year cap on unit prices.
People who use more will pay more. Full Fact chief executive Will Moy said: “ Liz Truss has repeatedly misled listeners this morning.
“She must now publicly correct her mistake to make sure people are not misled about their energy prices and hit with unexpected and unaffordable energy bills this winter.”
In other interviews, Ms Truss correctly referred to a “typical” bill.
But Uswitch research has found more than a third of households (38%) wrongly believe their bill can’t go any higher than £2,500.
Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis waded in tweeting: “The reason it is so important NOT to communicate that there is a £2,500 cap. Is it risks some people, possibly vulnerable elderly people, thinking they can keep the heat on max all winter, and they won't pay more than a certain amount.”
On Wednesday, before the PM’s round of interviews, he explained: “THERE IS NO £2,500 CAP ON ENERGY BILLS.
“So use more, pay more. £2,500 is just what someone with avg use'd pay.”
Under Liz Truss’s plan the Ofgem price cap of £1,971 a year - which was due to rise above £3,500 on October 1 - will be axed and replaced with a two-year ‘energy price guarantee’ from this weekend.
Under this scheme, a typical UK household will pay no more than £2,500 a year on bills for two years from October 1.
This includes the removal of green levies, which add about £150 a year to your bills, for two years.
But this is not a hard cap of £2,500 on all bills - it’s a cap on the average bill. Suppliers have the amount they can charge per unit of electricity or gas set by the government.
Government officials believe bills will work out at £3,300 a year for the average detached house.
That falls to £2,650 for semi-detached, £2,450 for end-of-terraces, £2,350 for mid-terraces, £2,450 for bungalows.
For converted flats the average is expected to be £1,950 and for purpose-built flats it’s set to be £1,750.
This means poorer people in larger, northern, colder homes will pay more than those in flats in the south.
On top of this new price guarantee, all bill-payers will still get an already-announced £400 discount this winter.
It’s spread over six months from October to March and should bring your bill over the next year down to about £2,100. This £400 is called the ‘Energy Bills Support Scheme’.
There’s also £650 for benefit claimants (£324 already paid), £300 for pensioners and £150 for disabled people. But none of these payments are pledged for winter 2023/24.
