By Nicholas Earl
Boris Johnson has stopped short of announcing fresh support for energy users to tame spiralling household bills, following a Downing Street roundtable with the energy sector.
The departing Prime Minister said he would “keep urging the electricity sector to continue working on ways we can ease the cost of living pressures and to invest further and faster in British energy security.”
He also said the Government is doing “everything we can” to support British households with their energy bills heading into winter – referring to the £400 discount offered in the last package of support in May.
This follows a roundtable hosted this morning featuring Johnson alongside Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng with industry leaders from the electricity sector, focused on the energy crisis.
During the meeting, the Government warned that extraordinarily high bills will ultimately damage energy companies and that “extraordinary” profits within the sector were being evaluated.
The meeting was attended by over a dozen firms including energy suppliers such as EDF and EON, alongside generators like SSE and industry body Energy UK.
Earlier today, there was also a fresh gloomy forecast concerning the price cap – with Auxilione the latest to predict sky-high prices this winter, before a later peak of £5,008 per year in April.
This has raised pressure on the Government to act, with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown outlining proposals to cancel the cap and potentially nationalise firms.
So Energy co-founder Simon Oscroft told City A.M. the Government was running out of time to tackle rising household energy bills ahead of winter.
He argued the energy sector was “at a state of emergency” and that the “Government needs to act.”
In his view, the longer politicians failed to announce plans to ease the pain facing consumers, the fewer options they would have at their disposal.
Oscroft said.: “I think that every day that goes past, the Government is narrowing its policy and the tools are which they are going to have to utilise are going to be blunter and blunter.”
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