Hunt to hike energy bills cap to eye-watering £3,100 this week

Jeremy Hunt is set to increase the energy price guarantee on Thursday (Image: PA)Millions of hard-working Britons will see their energy bills rise by as much as £900 a year next spring under plans set to be unveiled this week.Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is thought to be ready to axe the £2,500 energy price guarantee introduced by Liz Truss less than two months ago.The average price cap is instead expected to rise to as much as £3,100 a year.Only those on pensions or in receipt of benefits payments will be shielded from the new increase.The fresh hike comes despite Britons already paying on average much higher energy costs than others in Europe.But yesterday Mr Hunt said, “there has to be some constraint” on public finances in order to get the UK economy booming again.Labelling himself as “Scrooge”, he added: “We’ll make sure that we protect the most vulnerable. And in particular, deal with the single biggest worry for people on low incomes, which is the rising cost of their weekly shop and rising energy prices.’Will we continue to support people? Yes, we will.”Will it be uncapped, unlimited? We have to recognise that one of the reasons for the instability that followed the mini-Budget was that people were worried that we were exposing British public finances to the volatility of the international gas market.”So there has to be some constraints to it.”But yes, we will continue to support families, and I will explain exactly how we’re going to do that.”The plan to increase the energy price guarantee would help reduce the cost incurred by the Government from £60billion over six months to £20billion.Mr Hunt needs to find £60billion of saving when he unveils his Autumn Statement in the House of Commons on Thursday.The announcement was originally due to take place on October 31 but was pushed back in order to give the Chancellor and new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak more time to consider how to make the savings.More to follow…