howard mcsweeney1 wrote:The proposed cap on energy bills doesn't appear to be well thought through.
A stupid, stupid, stupid proposal. Why not 'cap' house prices or petrol or beer?
Adam Smith Institute: “Freezing energy prices was a very bad idea when Ed Miliband proposed it. Yet two years after the electorate rejected it Theresa May is putting forward the same idea and rebranding it a ‘cap’. The facts on the ground haven’t changed, yet just like workers on boards and the living wage, Red Ed’s Zombie Policies are on the march.”
Institute of Economic Affairs: “Introducing a cap on household energy prices would be a clumsy and counterproductive government intervention that could have an adverse effect on the energy market. A cap would likely backfire with companies finding some way around them: either by pushing prices higher now in anticipation of the cap or by increasing their lower prices to offset the cap at the top”
Centre for Policy Studies: “The claim that an energy price cap will save households £100 a year is by no means a guarantee. In fact, an intervention of this kind could be detrimental to competition in the market, meaning that this reform could end up doing more harm than good.”
Taxpayers’ Alliance: “Crude diktats such as this suggest that the government simply doesn’t understand the consequences of these ill-thought-out policies.”
Social Market Foundation: “Energy companies will inevitably recoup the costs of this cap elsewhere, which may mean higher prices for people who have shopped around and switched tariff to get themselves a better deal.”
CBI: “A major market intervention, such as a price cap, could lead to unintended consequences, for example dampening consumers’ desire to find the best deal on the market and hitting investor confidence.”
Market analysts RBC Europe: “This decision by May is clearly as much a political as it is an economic one. This intervention could create a worse deal for customers on average.”