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“Amber Rudd is still trying to get energy prices down”
By mid-January many a New Year resolution has bitten the dust. After all, the same sincerely held goals which might pepper the year as a whole are unlikely to take on extra resilience due to the turning of a calendar. And so the same-old mantra begins again: “This time I mean it…”
For most of us a lapsed ambition is just a slightly depressing, if entirely familiar, start to the year. But for energy secretary Amber Rudd the need to extract consumer price cuts from the big six may feel more frustrating than the average January setback. Rudd’s resolution that energy costs must come under control has morphed from a new-job goal last summer, to a number one priority by the Conservative party conference in autumn.
And this week in her first major interview of 2016 with The Daily Telegraph, her warning to the big six has emerged once more: cut bills in line with costs. And this time, she means it “in the strongest possible terms”, the newspaper said.
British Gas may have complied with two 5 per cent cuts last year, but on the whole consumer groups remain sceptical that the full force of the 2015 commodities price crash has been passed through.
And with the worst of the winter cold yet to come, energy companies may well be hoping to delay further cuts until the spring.
Still, Rudd may have reason for greater optimism than most with the weight of the CMA remedies expected to bolster her resolve later this month.
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