Do Britons misunderstand the price cap? #Peston

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]I sat in and listened to many calls of consumers phoning in who believe that the price cap was literally that. They could take as much energy as they want and it would only be charged a certain figure. The consequence is a lot of people are not investing in efficient technology. When I was a kid, in fact I think three out of the four people up here are old enough to remember, I was shouted at by my dad if I walked out of the room without switching the light switch off because I was a teenager during the oil crisis of the 70s. I still do it. And reducing consumption has to be part of the solution.

[00:00:30]And convincing people wrongly, unfairly, that they have their prices capped, it's just a cap on a cost on a theoretical amount of energy that an average person consumes. And that's not what people understand the price cap to be.