Brace yourselves. From 1 July, Ofgem's energy price cap rises by 13%, pushing the typical household bill to around £1,862 a year — roughly £221 more than households are paying now. For a country that was promised falling bills and energy security, this is a bitter pill, and it lands just as families are already stretched to breaking point.
The Bills Are Going Up, Not Down
Cast your mind back to the promises. Labour told the country that its dash for net zero would bring bills down, that renewables would make us cheaper and more secure. The reality on the doormat this July tells a different story. Gas prices alone are rising by around 24%, driven up by instability in the Middle East — a brutal reminder that an economy still dependent on imported energy is vulnerable to every shock abroad.
If our energy policy had genuinely delivered security, we would be insulated from these swings. Instead we are exposed to them, while being told to pay more for the privilege. You cannot run a modern economy on good intentions and wind forecasts.
The Hidden Cost of Net Zero
Here is what doesn't make the headlines. A large and growing share of your bill isn't the cost of the energy itself — it's the cost of policy. Network upgrades, renewable subsidies, standing charges and the vast infrastructure bill for the net zero transition are all loaded onto households, often buried where you'll never see them. Ministers like it that way, because it lets them claim the "wholesale price" is the whole story when it isn't.
The result is a system where ordinary families subsidise an ideological project they were never properly consulted on, and then get told the rising cost is somebody else's fault. Net zero is not free. It is being paid for, line by line, by every bill-payer in the country.
Punishing the People Who Can Least Afford It
It is pensioners on fixed incomes, families already cutting back on essentials, and small businesses fighting to keep the lights on who feel this most. A £221 rise is not an abstraction to them — it is a choice between heating and something else. A government serious about the cost of living would treat that as an emergency. This one treats it as an unavoidable cost of its own dogma.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would scrap the net zero levies driving up bills and take the ideological premium off your energy. We would back Britain's own energy — including our domestic gas reserves — to deliver real security instead of dependence on volatile foreign markets. And we would be honest about the true cost of policy decisions, rather than hiding them in the small print of your bill. Affordable, secure, homegrown energy — that is the goal, not a number on a spreadsheet in 2050.
Families don't want lectures about the planet while they ration the heating. They want bills they can afford. Labour has given them another £221 and a shrug. Reform would give them their energy policy back.