Brace yourself for another letter from your energy supplier. From the start of July, Ofgem's price cap rises by 13%, pushing the typical household bill up by well over £200 a year. After three winters of pain, families across Lancashire and the rest of the country are being told once again to simply absorb the cost. This is not a one-off shock. It is the predictable result of an energy policy built on wishful thinking.
Gas Up 24%, And Britain Left Exposed
The detail is brutal. Gas prices under the cap are rising by around 24%, with electricity up roughly 5%, driven by higher wholesale costs and instability in the Middle East. The honest question every minister should be forced to answer is this: why, after decades of North Sea reserves and world-class engineering, is Britain so dangerously exposed to the price of imported gas?
The answer is that successive governments, and now Labour, have spent years closing down domestic energy production while refusing to back new gas and nuclear at the scale we need. We have made ourselves dependent on volatile global markets and then act surprised when those markets bite. A serious country produces its own energy. We have chosen not to.
The Net Zero Levy Nobody Voted For
Hidden inside every bill is a stack of policy and network charges. Roughly £78 of the typical cap, around 9%, goes not on the energy you actually use but on funding government schemes to subsidise the net zero transition. Working families are being forced to bankroll an ideological project through a tax they never agreed to and that barely anyone understands.
And it is forecast to get worse, with the cap expected to climb a further 2% later in the year. Politicians promised that renewables would make power cheaper. Bills tell a different story. The truth is that net zero, delivered the way Westminster is delivering it, is a regressive tax that falls hardest on pensioners and low earners who can least afford it.
A Government With No Plan
Labour came to office promising to cut energy bills. Instead bills are going up, and the only idea on offer is to double down on the same policies that left us exposed in the first place. There is no urgency about new gas. No serious commitment to nuclear at pace. No willingness to admit that the timetable is unaffordable. Just more levies, more dependence, and more letters telling you to pay up.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would scrap the net zero levies loaded onto bills and fund support for vulnerable households out of general taxation, transparently, rather than hiding it in everyone's energy costs. We would back British gas and new nuclear to give us a secure, affordable supply we control. And we would set energy policy around one simple test: does it cut bills for British families, or does it raise them? Right now, Labour fails that test every single quarter.