Energy price cap rise is 'irresponsible' says Martin Lewis

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As the energy price cap is set to rise to a mind-blowing £3,549 from October, half of Britons are set to fall into poverty fuel. Despite guarantees by the chief executive of Ofgem Jonathan Brearley that “the regulator has done everything it can”, energy bills will rise to almost £300 a month for a household with “typical consumption” on a dual electricity and gas bill paying by direct debit. Personal finance expert Martin Lewis lays out which groups will take the brunt of the energy price hike.

Mr Lewis told BBC Radio 5 Live: “As the chair of the money and mental health policy institute charity, the devastating impact on people like your mental health because of the worry that you have.

“To have this announcement come today without having the help in place so people would know what would come is frankly irresponsible.

“So, my answer to your questions is you wait, your cross your fingers and you pray that when we have a new Prime Minister, he or she will do a lot more because a lot more is needed to help you.

“And a lot more is needed to help many vulnerable people. A lot more is needed to help many state pensioners of whom even on the new state pension, the biggest state pension – 37.5 percent typical use of the state pension – it is a bigger proportion of the old state pension.”

“It is a bigger proportion of what a person on universal credit gets. It’s a bigger proportion of what people on benefits get.

“The help in place is clearly nowhere near the scale of magnitude need to get people to survive this,” Mr Lewis said.

Martin Lewis laments Boris Johnson’s Government turned a blind eye to the inevitably upcoming energy crisis. Despite calls for a meeting between the outgoing Prime Minister and the two Tory leadership candidates vying to replace him, the three Conservative politicians have failed to come together.

“Now the great problem I have with this is I first warned we would be up these levels on my show in March – March!” Ms Lewis repeated.

“We knew this was coming. All the politicians saying, we need to work on the actual number. Why?!” Mr Lewis erupted.

“It’s a published algorithm based on a single underlying rate – the wholesale year ahead rates.

“The predictions were always going to be spot on. The nearer we got to the mark and within a couple of months away, we knew what it was. We did not have to wait.”

Cornwall Insight had predicted accurate numbers about the new Ofgem’s energy price cap but went largely unnoticed by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak during the Conservative hustings.

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Ofgem chief Jonathan Brearley called on the next Prime Minister to “match the scale of the problem”, with average bills set to soar by 80 percent from October.

“This is a major set of decisions that the new government will need to make, that the new prime minister and his or her ministerial team will need to make,” Mr Brealey said.

The new Prime Minister will be elected on September 5.

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