Uswitch and Ed Miliband: video and transcript

Richard: Hi, I’m Richard from Uswitch. We’ve been meeting the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, today to talk about the situation in the Middle East and some of the issues that Uswitch customers have been concerned about. Ed, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. 

Ed: Not at all, not at all.

Richard: Our customers are seeing a lot in the news at the moment about the situation in the Middle East. There's a lot of talk about what this means for UK energy prices. Could you give us a sense of how concerned you think customers should be and what steps the government is doing to protect them? 

Ed: First of all Richard, I understand why people seeing what's unfolding on their television screens will be worried.

I think the first and most important thing to say is to offer some reassurance to your customers, which is that in April we'll actually see the price cap, the dual fuel electricity gas price cap fall, fall by £117 from the previous quarter and that's because of actions that the government took in the budget to take money off bills. And that is fixed until the end of June. And so it's just, you know, obviously people have seen what's happening in the oil and gas markets and the rise in prices that we've seen, but that's just the first thing to say to people.

And if you're on a fixed rate tariff, we've said that the companies have got to pass on the savings as well. So that's the sort of starting point. The next thing I'd say is I'm also conscious there are people who are not necessarily on the price cap because, for example, they use heating oil. And obviously we've seen significant rises in the prices for heating oil. We've been saying to the companies you've got to treat people fairly and that's been really important.

And we've also made available an extra 50 million pounds to local authorities for those who are really in financial difficulties to be able to get some help. That was the way to get help out of the door as quickly as we could. We're determined in this crisis to fight people's corner, whether that's in relation to energy bills or petrol retailers and so on, and say that we can't have unfair practices like price gouging and so on take place.

Beyond that, what I'd say is so much of this will depend on how long the conflict lasts, because that will then shape what the price cap is for July onwards, which is obviously going to be the big issue that lots of your customers, clients are going to be wondering about. So, you know, part of this is about us doing everything we can to de-escalate this conflict because the sooner it can come to an end, the better.

But the other thing I'd say is we get that the cost of living crisis is the number one issue for people. And if intervention is necessary, we will intervene because we know that people were really hard pressed even before this crisis began. 

Richard: There's so many really important points there and it's good to see the intervention particularly on heating oil which hasn't had any protection but the point you made there about the April crisis is really worth underscoring.

We were seeing lots of news about prices going up but they're actually about to go down on the price cap and on people on fixed bills so that for at least three months is going to be a real thing. 

Ed: Exactly, and people do need to have that reassurance and and know that, and you know, thank goodness we have the price gap, It's a really, really important protection. 

Richard: So we’ve seen, obviously, previous world events have had an impact on energy prices. There was the start of the Russian-Ukraine conflict where a similar sort of thing happened and prices shifted around. I mean, at Uswitch we’re seeing, at least at the moment, it’s quite different to that. People can still get a fixed deal that locks in even that lower April price and have been able to for several weeks, even though the situation is sort of evolving every day. Do you see this current conflict as similar to that, or is it different in nature?

Ed: I mean, look, in a sense, it's too early to tell the actual impact and the reason we, one of the reasons I say we've got to de-escalate this conflict is we want to limit those impacts as much as possible. We were discussing earlier that, you know, I believe some lessons have been learned from the past. I think the sector is better regulated than it was back then and so hopefully that helps. I think the thing that is in common with that crisis is that the big lesson to learn is we've got to get off these fossil fuel markets because we don't control the price of gas and whether the gas comes from the North Sea and the North Sea is an important resource for us or is it important for what is set on the international market.

So you have this geopolitical instability and the prices go up and it's our families across the country that pay the price of that. So one of the things that we're doing to put us in a better position to withstand these shocks is driving forward with renewable power, nuclear power and other things to give us that greater protection. 

Richard: Yeah, I think we hear that from our customers quite a lot. The situation that we're seeing now in the Middle East is very serious and evolving, but also it's quite a lot for customers to have to follow the ins and outs of all these global events and what it might mean for household bills because it's so tied to that. So you talked there about the sort of longer-term plan to reduce our reliance on that, but when will consumers have to sort of track this a bit less? 

Ed: Well we’ve had these two renewable auctions in the last 20 months or so that we've been in power, which have produced enough renewable power to power the equivalent of 23 million homes. So all of that is about reducing our dependence.

It's also the case that we want to drive to more heat pumps in home heating because that's a way that people can insulate themselves as well. And the more we can do to get off this volatility, the better it is. And that's got to be our aim as a country. So we want to go as far and as fast as we can and we're accelerating this. It's also about us rolling out more key tech to people. For example, we're trying to pioneer this thing called plug-in solar which has been successful in Germany where it doesn’t need to go on your roof, it's an outside space, you can literally plug it in and it can help.

So all of these things are about getting off this volatility and also bringing the potential benefits of the free resources we have like the sun into people's homes. So we're doubling down, we're going as fast as we can.

Richard: Great, so particularly as we get more long term, we're kind of going in the right direction there and short term protections, as you mentioned before, people will be concerned about what happens in the next price cap and potentially ahead of winter, but at Uswitch where we're tracking prices and all that sort of stuff every day, it feels, too soon to call exactly what the shape of that will look like. There's a lot of moving parts still. But with that in mind, is there sort of one message you really want to get through to households right now about how they should be looking at the situation?

Ed: I think the most important thing to say to people watching is the government really gets the pressure people are under in terms of the cost of living before this crisis began.

We get that energy bills were still too high even before this crisis began. And I think the role of government in these moments is to stand by people and fight their corner. And that's what we're really determined to do. And anything we do has got to add up because stability in the public finances is really, really important. But we're obviously assessing the situation day by day, and there's other things that we’ve done that we haven't yet mentioned, like for example an increase in the number of people getting the so-called Warm Home Discount as an extra top up.

Richard: Yes.

Ed: £150 extra on people's bills. So we really are here to help people. We get the pressure people are under. And I also want to thank Uswitch for the work that you do because enabling people to shop around, to find the best deals is a really, really important service that you and others provide and I'm sure people really value it. 

Richard: Yeah, there are still some actions that customers can take in this time. Really appreciate it. Obviously a lot of moving parts, you’re very busy at the moment with the situation so we really appreciate the time you’ve taken to speak to us and to Uswitch customers.

Ed: Thanks a lot for having me.

Richard: Thank you.