Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his department has made an assessment of the potential effect of banning standard variable tariffs on (a) customer engagement (b) switching rates and (c) reducing the differentials between the highest and lowest tariffs.

Imposing an absolute price cap on domestic standard variable and default tariffs with limited exemptions will ensure customers on these tariffs do not pay unjustifiably high prices. Banning these tariffs would not provide assurance that they would not simply be replaced with an alternative default tariff that had little impact on customer engagement, switching rates or differentials between highest and lowest tariffs.

Reducing the differentials between the highest and lowest tariffs could result in suppliers removing their cheapest tariffs but maintaining high priced standard variable tariffs. This was also the view of the BEIS Select Committee in their report on the draft Bill.