Keir Starmer demands ban on raising energy prices
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 organisations 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.
Paul Kissack, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), which co-ordinated the letter, said the UK faces a “national emergency” while the government is “asleep at the wheel”.
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.”
Starmer, who returned from holiday at the end of last week, has come under pressure to say more on energy prices after former Labour leader Gordon Brown made the running with a series of major interventions.
In the Observer last weekend, Brown called for an emergency budget. He has also demanded the freezing of the price cap, as well as the temporary
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