Martin Lewis has joined calls for the UK Government to ‘urgently postpone’ plans to raise energy prices in April, warning that any decision cannot wait until the Budget on March 15. In a letter to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the consumer champion said that 1.7 million more people could be pulled into financial hardship if he does not freeze prices in the spring.
The founder of MoneySavingExpert.com urged the Chancellor to keep the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) at a typical £2,500 a year, rather than hiking it to £3,000 a year from April 1, 2023 as planned. He wrote that pushing back the looming 20 per cent hike would be both “practical and fair” and help people survive until bills begin to come down later in the year.
The letter states: “This cannot wait until the Budget - in practice, energy firms will need to know much sooner if the planned rise isn’t happening on 1 April, or they are bound to have to communicate to customers that it is coming.”
