Ofgem, the energy regulator, has a lot on its plate. Some 29 retail suppliers have gone bust in the past six months, Gazprom Energy, the Kremlin-backed company that supplies 20% of the UK’s non-domestic market, may soon need a quasi-nationalisation as corporate customers defect. Meanwhile, the country needs a new energy strategy, for which the technocrats’ input will be required.
There ought still to be space, though, for Ofgem to address the issue that Martin Lewis, the money saving guy, raised with MPs on Tuesday: companies playing “fast and loose” by whacking up consumers’ direct debits beyond what’s justified by next month’s hike in the energy price cap to £1,971 for an average household. Which suppliers are guilty, Lewis was asked. Virtually all of them, he replied.
