19th Report - Energy Bills Support
Select Committee
Public Accounts Committee
HC 511
28 March 2025
Government response
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Nineteenth report from Session 2024-25 · published 10 Jul 2025
Recommendations & Conclusions
5 results
2
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Set out plan by September 2025 for targeting future consumer support, addressing data matching challenges.
Conclusion
The Department would not yet be in a position to provide more targeted support to consumers and so reduce wasteful expenditure. Most of the £44 billion of support was provided through the schemes that were universal in nature, which means …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees to review options for better targeting support and improve data use for future schemes, acknowledging this is complex and involves ongoing work with stakeholders to consider options.
HM Treasury
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8
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Department commissioned evaluations to assess effectiveness of universal energy support schemes.
Conclusion
The Department has commissioned independent evaluations of all of its domestic and non–domestic financial support schemes.15 As part of these evaluations, the Department is reviewing whether approaches like universal support were effective, or if the cost of providing support to …
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Government Response Summary
The government acknowledges the committee's observation, stating it has conducted lessons learned activities and will share evaluation reports, including domestic and non-domestic energy affordability scheme evaluations, by Q3 2025. It will also write to the Committee with learnings within one month of publication.
HM Treasury
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10
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Current limited support schemes insufficient to shield households from future energy crises.
Conclusion
The Department said it was frustrated that the results of the evaluations would not be available to it sooner.19 Even so, it told us it was confident that it was “ready to deal with whatever happens in international energy markets”, …
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Government Response Summary
The government acknowledges the committee's observation, stating it has conducted lessons learned activities and will share evaluation reports, including domestic and non-domestic energy affordability scheme evaluations, by Q3 2025. It will also write to the Committee with learnings that can be applied to any future energy price crisis.
HM Treasury
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12
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Significant technical challenges impede effective targeting of energy support, particularly income data.
Conclusion
The Department said that even if it had wanted to, it would not have been able to target support at the time of introducing the schemes due to challenges with identifying household income to determine an appropriate level of support.26 …
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Government Response Summary
The government says it is taking the opportunity to review options for better targeting of future bill support beyond March 2026, exploring data sharing and data matching to improve the targeting of economic support.
HM Treasury
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14
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Department's poor understanding of non-domestic sector led to untargeted, inequitable support.
Conclusion
The Department acknowledged that it knew less about the non–domestic sector than the domestic sector at the time of the interventions and that this “threw up a number of issues and complexities”.33 It told us that targeting the non–domestic sector …
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Government Response Summary
The government says it is taking the opportunity to review options for better targeting of future bill support beyond March 2026, exploring data sharing and data matching to improve the targeting of economic support.
HM Treasury
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