Tories are pro-competition, says Damian Green

First secretary tells Conservative conference price cap would promote competition

The government’s move to cap energy bills is designed to promote and not thwart competition, prime minister Theresa May’s deputy told the Conservative party conference yesterday.

Delivering a keynote speech on the first day of the Tory party annual conference, the government’s First Secretary Damian Green claimed there was a contrast between the Conservative and Labour approaches to energy price regulation.

He said: “When we say that we want to sort out problems with excessive boardroom pay or energy prices we do that because we are pro-business and pro-competition.

“Conservatives want to stop abuses in business. Labour just wants to abuse business and business people. We want to reform business not because we are anti-business but because we are pro-business.”

Alex Wild, research director at the Tax Payers Alliance thinktank, acknowledged at a fringe meeting later on that the government saw energy price rises as ‘politically toxic’.

But he questioned whether the government understood the ramifications for wider energy policy of its move to clamp down on bills.

“Government policy requires hundreds of billions to be spent by the private sector. Someone has to pay for it and that has to be paid for through higher profits which has to be paid for by consumers.

“Across the board increases are not warranted.”

He also queried whether the government should set the optimum level of switching between energy suppliers.

Dan Lewis, infrastructure policy director at the Institute of Directors, told the meeting that he would prefer to see a cross market default tariff which customers would be automatically defaulted onto when their existing contracts ended.

Arguing that having such a tariff would spur customers to switch, he said: “A transparent default tariff which was measured the same way across all suppliers would drive competition across the suppliers.”