Just as households were daring to hope the worst was behind them, the bill lands. Ofgem has confirmed the energy price cap will rise by 13% from July. The typical annual bill for a household paying by direct debit goes from £1,641 to £1,862. That is roughly an extra £18 a month, arriving right in the middle of the year, when nobody budgeted for it.

Gas Bears The Brunt

Strip out the averages and it gets worse for many. Gas prices are set to rise by around 24%, while electricity goes up by about 5%. For the millions of homes that heat with gas, that is a serious hit. Ofgem points to higher wholesale gas prices, driven in part by conflict in the Middle East, as the cause. Britain remains dangerously exposed to events thousands of miles away because we have failed to secure our own energy supply.

That is the real lesson here, and it is one this government refuses to learn. When you run down domestic production and bet the house on imports and intermittent supply, you hand control of your family's bills to foreign markets and foreign crises.

The Costs You Do Not See

It is not only wholesale prices pushing bills up. Network costs and policy costs, the charges that pay for the great transition to net zero, are projected to keep climbing. We are told bills will fall some glorious day decades from now. Tell that to the pensioner deciding whether to put the heating on this week. Promises of cheaper power in 2050 are no comfort to a family staring at a higher bill in 2026.

The cost of net zero does not vanish because politicians stop talking about it. It simply moves around, onto standing charges, onto network levies, onto general taxation, and ultimately onto you. Honesty about that cost is the very least the public deserves.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would put energy security and affordability first. That means backing reliable, home-grown supply, including our own North Sea reserves, so that British families are not held hostage by overseas turmoil. It means scrapping the levies and targets that load cost onto bills without cutting them in any timeframe that matters to a working household.

Cheap, secure energy is the foundation of a prosperous country. A 13% rise in the middle of summer is a sign of how far we have drifted from it.