Claims Labour pledged to freeze energy bills appears to refer to old policy

On Sky News on 27 August shadow science, innovation and technology secretary Andrew Griffith MP claimed that “Labour promised energy prices would be frozen”.

We’ve also seen similar claims made on Facebook.

We’ve asked Mr Griffith what he was referring to, and will update this article if we receive a response.

The Labour party did not pledge to freeze energy prices during the recent general election campaign—no such promise featured in its manifesto. Labour previously pledged in 2022 and early 2023 to freeze the domestic energy price cap, which may have been what Mr Griffith was referring to, but this was when prices were higher than they are now. 

Separately, Labour’s manifesto did pledge to “cut bills for good” by investing in clean energy projects, but did not say bills would be reduced or “frozen” immediately. Specifically, the party announced proposals to “set up Great British Energy, a publicly-owned clean power company”, and in the run-up to the election prominent Labour politicians claimed this would cut bills by up to £300 a year. But as we wrote at the time, this was a long-term estimate of what the average family would save by 2030. (It was also an out-of-date figure which wasn’t based on an assessment of Labour’s plans, and since the election it’s been reported that Number 10 will no longer commit to it.)

We’ve contacted the Labour party for comment.

However one of the posts on Facebook includes a video of Sir Keir Starmer appearing on the Jeremy Vine programme on Channel 5 and speaking about freezing energy prices.

But this clip is almost two years old, and shows Mr Starmer, then Leader of the Opposition, talking about how Labour would have responded to increasing energy prices were it in government at the time.

In response to rising energy prices, the Labour party announced in August 2022 that if it were in government it would freeze the domestic energy price cap (the maximum price that can be charged per unit of gas and electricity) at the level it was at (£1,971 for a typical household) until at least April 2023.

The then government subsequently announced its own policy, the Energy Price Guarantee, which limited energy bills to an average of £2,500 per year for a typical household.

In January 2023, in response to news that the Energy Price Guarantee would increase by £500 in April that year, Labour called on the government to keep prices frozen until July 2023. The government did ultimately keep the Energy Price Guarantee at £2,500 until July 2023, by which point the energy price cap had fallen below the level of the Energy Price Guarantee.

The energy price cap is currently £1,568, and is set to increase to £1,717 in October 2024. Both these figures are lower than the amount at which Labour said it would freeze energy bills in August 2022.