Rishi Sunak’s first attempt to “take the sting out” of rising household energy bills was a bits-and-pieces £9bn support package that seemed to rest on the idea that the crisis would go away soon. The giveaway in the thinking was the £200 per household “rebate” that represented about half the headline figure. It wasn’t a rebate in a true sense – it was just a means to shove a portion of customers’ bill into later years, when, the chancellor was presumably calculating, wholesale prices would be lower.
The plan sounded hopeful when unveiled in February but now reads as naive and politically unfeasible. Latest projections suggest October’s price cap will rise by another £600 per household on average – that’s on top of the £694 increase that kicked in at the start of this month. And a key point, as a battalion of energy bosses told MPs on the business and energy select committee on Tuesday, is that the new tariff will apply during the winter months of peak consumption.
