The Liz Truss energy price subsidy plan: Deeply flawed but also necessary?

On the table is a plan that will help the rich far more than poorer families and is ruinously expensive, writes James Moore. But the crisis is of sufficient magnitude that action has to be taken to avoid an economic meltdown

Protesters calling for affordable energy block the road outside Ofgem’s headquarters in Canary Wharf (Getty)

The energy plan now taking shape under Liz Truss looks set to provide far more benefits to wealthier owners of bigger houses than it will to a family on universal credit, struggling to pay for their food, let alone their energy bills, this winter.

We have yet to see the fine details of the plan, which will subsidise energy suppliers’ purchases, and reduce the bills to the end consumer that way. But the perversity of subsiding the high bills racked up by wealthy owners of larger homes is obvious.

Another problem, and it’s a glaring one, is that it provides no incentive to improve energy efficiency.