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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate his Department has made of the number of households in (a) Scotland, (b) England, (c) Wales and (d) Northern Ireland which will be affected by Ofgem’s decision to increase its price cap by £57 a year from April 2018.

The prepayment meter safeguard (price cap) tariff covers around 5 million households in Great Britain (around 4 million on pre-payment meters and around 1 million recipients of the Warm Home Discount). Ofgem estimated that the introduction of the cap saved an average PPM customer £60 a year, and even with the recent change the cap will remain £34 cheaper than the market average standard variable tariff.