Price Cap - Just announced

[swifttwist]

From £1971 to £3549. 80% rise. I have no words.

New figures:

Electricity
£0.52 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.46

Gas:
£0.15 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.28

The problem with means testing is that it is costly and complex to administer. A lot of the time blanket payments work out more cost effective.

Pensioners on pension credit could be the means-test.

Also people who receive PIP at the enhanced daily living rate, who have essential energy costs (medical equipment, storing medicines).

I’d also increase child benefit and bring back the £20 uplift.

This is just too tiny a group of people.

This cost rise is much bigger than the Tories seem to be grasping. We are looking at vast numbers in fuel poverty.

These type of pathetic gestures will not make a dint.

The daily mail are concerned about the pensioners and rising energy costs but I do know a few coming up to being eligible for their state pensions soon and they haven't bothered to save up for a private pension. Always worked etc. It'll be these who will receive help I suppose and those with a private one who won't.
People might start thinking what's the point of saving anything or towards a private pension. Especially if it's all going to energy companies Which isn't a good stance to take , but you can see why they feel like this or don't look to the future.

It'll be these who will receive help I suppose and those with a private one who won't.

Quite right too. We have occupational pensions and don’t need help. I’m bloody grateful we don’t need it. The winter payment this year will go straight to the food bank and I’m upping my direct debit. If we hadn’t got our occupational pensions we wouldn’t be able to help other people.

Cheers for that. Pensioner couple here, our income is about half of the national average, ie £18K. DH is 77, has heart failure, and rarely goes out, so our heating gets some hammer in the winter.

We don’t qualify for pension credit, or any means tested benefits. Serves us right for saving a bit for a pension. I know lots of pensioners like us. Didn’t earn a lot but tried to save for their old age, now find themselves excluded from any means tested help. Be warned, its only worth saving for a pension if its long term and guaranteed to deliver a good income.

I'm not criticizing those that save up or have private pensions, I'm just making the points that some people might think it's a waste of time and money to do this because they won't receive any state help in the future if they do.
I know it's a bad mindset to have though !
The £ 400 this winter is very welcome towards the cost of the fuel. It'll go onto my account and top that up. I can't see the government doing this again though for people in our position though.

I think some already think it's a waste of time if the pension will be quite low, pension credit opens up a raft of other benefits that people with a pension just over the threshold don't get so they end up being better off with the credit than those that don't qualify for it

There’s no point arguing who should or shouldn’t get help. The fact remains that energy bills will go up again in a matter of months and then again in April. They’ll have to do something radical like nationalising the energy companies. They won’t like it but their hands will be tied. Giving out handouts to means tested groups is just putting off the inevitable that everyone will be need help in the end. Without it we won’t have an economy and society will start to collapse.

You can’t just nationalise the energy companies. I don’t understand why people keep saying this. It would cost a phenomenal amount of money.

@Seymour5

Yes I really feel for you

Always the same isn't it

It would cost way too much to renationalise the energy companies.. the utilities should not have gone down this route to start with , but we are where we are and I doubt they have the money to do this anyway.
I've not heard about anything Liz truss will do to help apart from the vat cut ideas.
I think it'll be a case of take the 400 per household etc ( plus some had more than this too ) and just get on with it. They will keep on about this as being enough I bet when it clearly won't be.
Have to see what happens.

Yes you can. Whose economic judgement do you trust more Liz Truss or Gordon Brown?

www.theweek.co.uk/business/economy/957627/is-it-time-to-nationalise-energy-companies

Exactly my point. Pension income isn’t split Pension Credit/Well off, its a gradual slope that often penalises the thriftier low earners.

@woodhill. Thank you.

You can. And I strongly suspect that it will happen with a change of government. Privatisation was insane, that and right to buy have got us where we are now. Thatcher has a lot to answer for, the astonishing thing is that it’s taken 40 years for the chickens to come home to roost.

would that even do anything about worldwide energy costs having gone up about 500% since march 2020?

What do we know about any extra help? We qualify for the £650 but is any more help only going to be for the poor then?

Lots of old policies are now looked at as a bit ' batshit ' from all governments, but they did seem a good idea at that time. There wasn't enough forwards thinking , but many people became very rich because of it so I believe that was always the intention anyway from making everything privately owned and sod everyone else.

HS2 is currently costing the government £98 billion. Caping the energy market for the next two years would cost £100 billion. Which would you prioritise?

Neoliberalism is failing. The project that Thatcher started has reached its bitter conclusion and it’s going to being very unpleasant to live through.

You only have to nationalise the UK energy production part, not the part that drills in the Artic etc.

I don't know the numbers but it should be considered by the Govt (who have the numbers), to put it in perspective, significant help to the UK's 27m households would be well over 100 billion just for ONE year.

I don't know what the adv of nationalising suppliers is, they'd still have to buy UK produced gas/renewables at the global market price and sell it to us :(

..and what if the gas supply crisis lasts 5 years or 10 or even longer? Will take 10 years to commission another new Nuke power plant and that energy will be sold back to UK consumers at global rates as it is now.

That 100 billion of tax payers money goes straight into the bank of Shell BP etc.
UK needs to do what France has done and nationalise the majority of its energy needs.

I agree we need to nationalise the market. Starmer won’t commit to this yet but he’ll change his mind. This is going to be a long term problem. We’re probably looking at 10 years of recession.

Are your occupational pensions invested in oil and gas? Just a thought......

How is nationalising going to make worldwide, yes worldwide, energy prices come down?

I had to laugh at the poster who reckons that pensioners have more disposable income than working households.

Where on earth do you get that idea from? Can I suggest that you look at your nett income, forget your phone's, TV contracts, drink, cigarettes, sky, nails, trips to restaurants, new clothes, holidays, just take off the water bill, school costs, normal food costs, and then let's compare income!

Pensioners have more disposable income because they go without those things that you consider to be essential but are not. We are pensioners, in receipt of a state pension, and topped up with £10 pw pension credit. We have been managing because we don't have the extras that younger people may consider to be essential. We have one phone, the same one as nearly 15 years ago. We pay £1 per week for it! Last winter we heated one room and managed.

With this latest hike, putting the heating on won't be possible. We can go to having showers once weekly and otherwise strip wash. I already cook from scratch and much is done in one go to reduce cooking costs. Based on this we won't fall into debt.

Pensioners have a larger disposable income? I don't think so.