Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the effect on trends in switching of the implementation of the price cap for pre-payment meter energy customers; and if he will publish switching rates among these customers for each of the last twelve months for which figures are available.

Ofgem’s safeguard tariff includes a degree of ‘headroom’, to allow suppliers to offer competitive deals beneath the level of the cap and incentivise switching. BEIS publish quarterly domestic energy switching statistics provided by Ofgem. The latest data published in December 2017 shows 1,284,000 electricity meters and 1,110,000 gas meters switched energy supplier in Q3 of 2017. We do not hold data that provides a breakdown of the number of switches by payment type.