Political Agenda this week, by David Blackman

“Draft bill could be a ­mechanism to push Ofgem”

The government came under pressure last week from the opposition over the pace of its much trumpeted crackdown on prices.

It’s a fair question because despite the grandstanding, ministers are displaying a lack of urgency on the topic.

Ministers have published a draft bill instead of heading straight to legislation.

Draft bills have only been around since the Blair government, when the mechanism was invented to improve the quality of legislation. It became standard practice for laws to be published in draft form to iron out problems before they hit the politically charged atmosphere of the House of Commons chamber.

But draft bills have gone out of fashion since the coalition came to power. While there were more than ten published in 2012, there have only been three in each of the past two years.

It is unclear how long the process of prelegislative scrutiny will take or indeed the time it will take to go through parliament.

Then, once the legislation has cleared Westminster, Ofgem has estimated it will be at least another five months before a cap could be introduced. It begs the question, therefore, why has the government used the mechanism in this particular instance?

The reason may be that the cerebral Greg Clark wants to ensure the bill is watertight when it reaches parliament.

But a cynic might suspect the government doesn’t really want to legislate if it can avoid it, given the amount of time Brexit is likely to chew up. Instead, the draft bill could be a mechanism to push Ofgem into action.