We welcome the PM’s energy price cap pledge

Today's announcement by Theresa May could be the death knell of “tease and squeeze” tactics. 

In a much-needed move to stop consumers being ripped off, Theresa May says she'll enforce an energy price cap.

The Prime Minister told the Conservative Party Conference that she will introduce legislation to help the millions of gas and electricity customers stuck on overpriced standard variable tariffs.

In a shot across the bows of the Bix Six energy firms, Mrs May took the decision out of the hands of industry regulator Ofgem to force it through herself. And we absolutely welcome the decision. 

It's wonderful news for British bill payers, but only if the cap is meaningful. The Big Six will use every trick in the book to try to minimise the impact of a cap, but it's critical that the government follows through on these strong words to finally end the deceptive and exploitative pricing of these dinosaur companies.

We're already seeing the Big Six introducing fixed tariffs which are in many ways worse than their standard variable tariffs, and we need bullet proof action to stamp out all these dirty tricks.

As you know, we've campaigned relentlessly on energy pricing and shone a light on the many tactics used by the Big Six, such as “tease and squeeze” pricing – where they lure customers in with cheap introductory deals before moving them to far more expensive standard variable tariffs. It's basically an inefficiency tax placed on their most loyal customers, and we've shown the extent of rip-off pricing in every constituency here: http://thepriceofpower.co.uk/constituencies/

We also recently undertook a secretly-recorded social experiment showing how drinkers would react if their orders were priced in the same way as the energy market, which you can view here:

Unlike the dinosaur energy companies, we have to fight for every single customer. When we say we believe in competition, we mean it.