Making policy at the despatch box – a recipe for disaster

You have to wonder what was going through David Cameron’s mind when he decided to announce a radical reshaping of the energy supply market in the Commons.

Apparently he jumped the gun by announcing the policy early.  Yet, he still decided to grab some populist headlines by appearing to make up the country’s energy policy on the hoof.

And what an idea…all energy suppliers will be forced to give everyone – everyone! – their lowest available tariff. This turned out not to be quite the case but for a day the government were unable to give a proper response to the understandable questions this change in policy raised. The consequence?

A further undermining of in confidence in this government’s ability to make meaningful long-term decisions about our energy market, which means we are even less attractive to private sector investors than before. Foreign firms had already been running for the hills rather than invest in our new nuclear capacity, so goodness knows what they made of this new idea.

You have to have a free market – people should be able to choose the product they want at the price they want – you can’t nanny them.

If you force one tariff on everyone, then that tariff will have to be a higher one for the suppliers to make a profit. Surely consumers can be expected to make some decisions for themselves. 

I do understand that tariffs are overly complex, but the same is true of rail fares (another source of shaky investor confidence).

The Green Deal is also in danger of collapsing under the weight of this nannying culture.  Whatever happened to let the buyer beware? Even for a Green Deal project the consumer should get three quotes and evaluate that there might be a risk if they choose the lowest one.

The focus on the Green Deal is at the wrong end. We should be fixed on the end of the process and whether the work you have paid for delivers.  And we need to educate customers and empower them to understand whether or not the savings they have been promised have materialised –tie it in with smart grid roll out.  Instead the government is trying to put in so much consumer protection at the start that legitimate contractors will be put off because it is yet another accreditation scheme that pushes up their costs.

Who would have thought a Tory-led government would be guilty of bolstering the Nanny State? But they have; and the impact on our ‘Energy Policy’ could be catastrophic.