HOUSEHOLDS won’t receive any significant new help from the government when bills rise in April, Jeremy Hunt hinted today.
During a visit to a London science facility, the Chancellor said energy bill help won’t verge far from what was already announced in the Autumn Statement.
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But he didn’t rule out some form of new support being introduced in the March Budget.
The Chancellor said: “We constantly keep the help we can give families under review.
“But if you’re saying ‘do I think we’re going to have the headroom to make a major new initiative to help people?’, I don’t think the situation would have changed very significantly from the autumn statement, which was just three months ago.”
Average gas and electricity bills are expected to rise from £2,500 to £3,000 on April 1.
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Fuel poverty campaigners and Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis have called for Mr Hunt to postpone the hike.
It’s expected to drag another 1.7million Brits into fuel poverty.
“We know just how tough it is for many people dealing with these huge spikes in their energy bills,” Mr Hunt said.
“And that’s why we’re giving about £3,500 for the average family this year and last to help with those pressures, absolutely unprecedented support.
“We always look at what else we can do, but we also have to be responsible with public finances.”
He added: “At the same time as energy prices have come down, so too have our receipts from the windfall taxes. So we have to look at everything in the context of what is responsible for public finances, because if we don’t, we’ll just see interest rates go up and then everyone who has a mortgage up and down the country will face a different kind of cost.”
Wholesale energy prices have tripled due to the war in Ukraine, causing the government to subsidise bills for households.
But analysts now say wholesale prices are falling, which means that the average bill could hit £2,200 from July.
However, bills are currently protected by the Energy Price Guarantee, which means that they might not fall at this point.
As well as capping the average cost of energy for households, the government has paid for every UK household to have a £400 discount on bills – but this ends in March.
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From April the support will only help low income and elderly households, while others will have to pay an average of £3,000 a year.
HM Treasury said that if prices return to what they were in August, the government would need to borrow an extra £42billion.
