Energy UK ‘has no relationship’ with Shapps

The chief executive of Energy UK has told Utility Week she has no relationship with the secretary of state and is yet to meet him, despite the country facing the worst energy crisis in memory.

Emma Pinchbeck was scathing of Grant Shapps and accused him of producing “inaccurate” PR around action taken following forced prepayment meter (PPM) installations.

Shapps – who heads up the recently formed Department for Energy Security and Net Zero – has been severely critical of energy retailers in recent weeks, having penned several public letters to industry over their treatment of vulnerable customers. Energy UK meanwhile has previously spoken about its frustration over Shapps’ failure to meet with industry heads.

Speaking to Utility Week about the issue, Pinchbeck said: “I haven’t met him yet and I’m not saying I’m the most important person in Whitehall, far from it. But I am the chief executive of a trade body in the middle of an energy crisis, where we would historically sit down with the energy secretary, that’s the thing that I would expect to be able to do in my job.”

She was also asked whether she currently had a constructive relationship with the government and specifically with Shapps.

In response, she said: “I think you have to have a relationship to describe it as constructive or negative. That’s basically how I feel about it. I’ve had difficult relationships with secretary of states before and to reiterate, that’s fine, I’m not asking for the industry not to have a hard time from government – that’s their job to some extent.

“But I am saying I like that conversation to be rooted in some sort of substance or engagement. Now I wouldn’t know what the secretary of state thinks of industry, because for that, I’d have to know what he’s thinking, I haven’t met him yet.”

Pinchbeck did confirm she had met with Graham Stuart, formally a BEIS minister and now minister in the new energy and net zero department.

“I think it’s fair to say that before the departmental changes the brief was devolved to the minister, and I did meet the minister. So it wasn’t that we haven’t met government at all,” she added.

“I will say there has been engagement from elsewhere in government as well. Unusually, at the moment, I’m seeing the Treasury more than I’m seeing my own department.”

Additionally the Energy UK chief was heavily critical of the statement coming from Shapps in recent weeks in relation to the moratorium on forced PPM installations.

Following headline-grabbing reports that British Gas was forcefully installing PPMs in the homes of vulnerable customers, all energy suppliers committed to banning warrant activity until 31 March. Yet Pinchbeck has accused Shapps of “taking credit” for this.

She added: “Sometimes the PR is inaccurate. That’s the other thing that bothers me about it. So just to give you an example, the most recent one was the secretary of state taking credit for the suppliers voluntarily introducing moratoria in that week.

“Before he’d written to them, they’d already come out and done that. And I know that because we’re the trade body so we’ve been involved in those discussions about how the industry was going to respond. And they’d all announced their moratoria a week before his press release in public.”

She added: “I just think there’s some real honest to god serious stuff to look at here, really challenging, transformative, once in a generation problems to grasp with.

“It’s not about disagreeing with government, we do that all the time, we should, we’re the industry. It’s about the level of the discussion is nowhere near serious enough for the scale of the problems that we’re tackling.”

High level policy

Returning to work in January this year after taking maternity leave last April, Pinchbeck said she “cannot believe the change in government in the time I’ve been off”.

She said she believes the government is in “high level mode” and that there is little detail to follow policy announcements.

She added: “So my other favourite example of this is, talking about having a 2035 decarbonised power sector but not doing the work to remove planning restrictions or bureaucratic processes slowing that down.

“In retail you can’t ask industry to be investing in more call centres, customer support, financial help, best practice and also saying it’s fine for you to be making negative profit margins. You can’t do both of those things so we would really like to see more from government.”

She said she had never known a government where there is “such a big disconnect” with the scale of work needed and the machinery being driven to deliver it.

“And I don’t say that lightly, I generally have found Whitehall an interesting and mostly enjoyable place to work where people, you might disagree with them, but they’re pushing on,” she added.

A government spokesperson said in response: “Government routinely engages with the energy industry, including Energy UK, but these statements ignore the impact Putin’s weaponisation of energy has had on world markets. We are doing all we can to support people and businesses and the government has stepped in to pay around half of households’ energy bills this winter.”