The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is to call for a ban on crippling energy price rises this autumn in a move that would save the average household more than £2,000 a year on gas and electricity bills, the Observer can reveal.
The demand to freeze the energy price cap at the current £1,971 level – blocking the regulator Ofgem from allowing a huge anticipated rise to around £3,600 in October – will place intense pressure on the Tory leadership candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to follow suit when one becomes prime minister.
Starmer’s plan, to be announced on Monday, comes as 70 of the country’s biggest charities and organizations across health, mental health, education, care, and other sectors, today warn Truss and Sunak in a joint letter of dire consequences throughout British society unless they take more drastic action to address the energy and wider cost of living crises.
Demanding urgent help for the most vulnerable, in the form of a doubling of the £1,200 that was committed earlier this year to households on means-tested benefits, Kissack said: “Without it, vulnerable people will face a catastrophe on a vast scale when winter sets in. The consequences of sitting idly by are unthinkable.
The energy price cap, introduced in 2019, limits the maximum amount energy suppliers can charge for each unit of gas and electricity used.
In their letter to Sunak and Truss the 70 charities and other organizations, including JRF, AgeUK, Trussell Trust, Children’s Society, the TUC, Shelter, MacMillan Cancer Support, Mind, Oxfam GB, and Action for Children, tell the Tory leadership candidates that “the cost of the living crisis on low-income households is the gravest issue our country faces”.
