Ministers are putting huge faith in wholesale prices falling and then stabilising; the background fear is another surge
For the last umpteen years Ofgem has offered parental-sounding advice when adjusting the energy price cap. “Switch to save money”, the regulator trumpeted last February as the maximum rate was raised by £96. Even last autumn, when £139 was added, Ofgem was still saying customers “can avoid the increase by shopping around”.
There’s no escape now. As the thumping £693 increase from April landed on Thursday, the regulator merely offered a limp line about how it knows it’s all “extremely worrying for many people”. It, like everybody else, knows there aren’t better deals to switch to. Competition has disappeared. The price cap has become the floor rate, not the ceiling. Roughly 80% of households are on it – the main exceptions being those who had the luck or foresight to secure a fixed rate before wholesale gas prices quadrupled.
