Chancellor rules out extra support for energy bills

Households are unlikely to get extra support with energy bills from April, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said.

Energy bills for a typical household are set to rise from £2,500 to £3,000 a year.

The government has been under pressure to offer additional help for people to cope with high gas and electricity costs.

Consumer finance expert Martin Lewis said that allowing the bill increase would be a "national act of harm".

The government's energy price guarantee reduces what households pay per unit of energy they use.

From April, the typical household bill will be allowed to rise to £3,000 per year. The scheme will run until April 2024.

A £400 discount applied to most households' energy bills from October is also due to end at the beginning of April.

Some groups will get extra cash payments to help with energy costs, including households on means-tested benefits, pensioners, and some people on disability benefits.

Mr Lewis, founder of Moneysavingexpert, has written to the chancellor, warning him that would mean another 1.7m people will enter fuel poverty - when people cannot afford to adequately heat their home - taking the total to 8.4m.

Mr Hunt told the BBC said that the Treasury kept all support "under review" but he did not think the government had the "headroom to make a major new initiative to help people".

The National Audit Office recently published a report saying the energy price guarantee will now cost less than £40bn and this was a way to help bring down inflation and avoid a recession.

Mr Hunt said: "We always look at what else we can do. But we also have to be responsible with public finances, because if we're not, we'll just see interest rates go up, and people will face a different kind of cost, and that's why we have to get that balance right."