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Select Committee · Public Accounts Committee

Energy Bills Support

Status: Closed Opened: 29 Nov 2024 Closed: 16 Jun 2025 3 recommendations 25 conclusions 1 report

Beginning in autumn 2021, energy bills began to increase significantly due to factors including increased global demand for gas post-pandemic, and the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on energy markets. Average annual household bills for gas and electricity increased from £1,277 in winter 2021/22 to over £4,000 by the start of 2023.The Government acted …

Clear

Reports

1 report
Title HC No. Published Items Response
19th Report - Energy Bills Support HC 511 28 Mar 2025 28 Responded

Recommendations & Conclusions

3 items
2 Conclusion 19th Report - Energy Bills Support Acknowledged

Set out plan by September 2025 for targeting future consumer support, addressing data matching challenges.

The Department would not yet be in a position to provide more targeted support to consumers and so reduce wasteful expenditure. Most of the £44 billion of support was provided through the schemes that were universal in nature, which means that some people who did not need the support still …

Government response. The government agrees to review options for better targeting support and improve data use for future schemes, acknowledging this is complex and involves ongoing work with stakeholders to consider options.
HM Treasury
12 Conclusion 19th Report - Energy Bills Support Acknowledged

Significant technical challenges impede effective targeting of energy support, particularly income data.

The Department said that even if it had wanted to, it would not have been able to target support at the time of introducing the schemes due to challenges with identifying household income to determine an appropriate level of support.26 Written evidence from the Energy Systems Catapult and Fair by …

Government response. The government says it is taking the opportunity to review options for better targeting of future bill support beyond March 2026, exploring data sharing and data matching to improve the targeting of economic support.
HM Treasury
14 Conclusion 19th Report - Energy Bills Support Acknowledged

Department's poor understanding of non-domestic sector led to untargeted, inequitable support.

The Department acknowledged that it knew less about the non–domestic sector than the domestic sector at the time of the interventions and that this “threw up a number of issues and complexities”.33 It told us that targeting the non–domestic sector was a challenge because of “level of data to allow …

Government response. The government says it is taking the opportunity to review options for better targeting of future bill support beyond March 2026, exploring data sharing and data matching to improve the targeting of economic support.
HM Treasury

Oral evidence sessions

1 session
Date Witnesses
6 Feb 2025 Ben Golding · Clean Power 2030, Jeremy Pocklington CB · Ministry of Defence, Jonathan Mills · Department for Energy Security and Net Zero View ↗

Correspondence

3 letters
DateDirectionTitle
8 Jan 2026 To cttee Letter from the Interim Permanent Secretary at the Department for Energy Securi…
4 Sep 2025 To cttee Letter from the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Energy Security and N…
17 Jul 2025 From cttee Letter to the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Energy Security and Net…