Editor’s letter: The energy review needs retail expertise

Are the answers of Dieter Helm's cost of energy review a foregone conclusion, asks Ellen Bennett.

It’s 1 September and back to school – but term time has already started for the members of Dieter Helm’s cost of energy review, who have been given a startlingly short turnaround time of less than three months to review the entire energy chain and, apparently, fix it. That’s a big task for anyone – just ask the Competition and Markets Authority, a body set up for just this purpose, which spent more than two years reviewing the energy retail market alone, resulting in a considered and weighty set of conclusions that have apparently been chucked out the window by ministers determined to score a point in the never-ending row over energy prices.

And it’s not just the timescale that raises eyebrows. Helm is inarguably an expert – so much so that his views are well aired, and widely known. There’s even a website you can visit to read his in-depth papers on all aspects of the market, and his recommendations for fixing it. What is he going to learn in less than 12 weeks that will change his already well-informed mind? If the answer is nothing, then ministers could have saved the public purse the cost of yet another review and simply spent a few hours reading his website.

Finally, there are Helm’s fellow panellists. They’re a great clutch of names – though the degree of influence they’ll have over Helm’s final report is unknown. But surely there’s something missing? Nick Winser’s inclusion is encouraging and provides an expert on the network business; Richard Nourse’s appointment has caused comment, but it at least brings an investor – albeit a specialist renewables investor – into the fold.

But if the cost of energy review is to take an informed, thoughtful and impartial overview of the market, it would seem sensible to have an individual with deep knowledge of the energy retail industry on the panel. Of course, a current chief executive wouldn’t be appropriate but there are plenty of former company leaders who would fit the profile. Tony Cocker, for example, or one of the clutch of energy Big Beasts who just put their names to the excellent Forum for the Future report looking at the future of the market.

The inclusion of such a member on the panel would make it seem more of a review and less of a witch hunt. But then, perhaps they wouldn’t give the right answers.