Welcome to This Is Money Podcast. I'm Georgie Frost. Stand alongside me and assistant editor Lee Boyce is consumer expert Grace Gawston. And coming up, energy prices are set to go up for millions from October, just as the weather turns and likely a large proportion of us may still be working from home. Offgem has raised the energy price cap again. Is the cap another example of good intentions badly executed or the only way to protect

vulnerable people from disproportionate bill hikes also today the death of the landline the rise

of satellite broadband the current account battle hots up and grace has been on the case as she has

been since november 2020 in fact our intrepid reporter celebrates clawing back

over £200,000 for This Is Money readers, but what are our biggest and most satisfying

wins? And what is she working on now? Don't forget this update with all the latest breaking

money news, just go to this ismoney.com.uk or download the app. From October, households can expect to pay even more for their energy bills.

For the second time in a year, regulator of GEM is raising the energy price cap due to rising wholesale prices.

Now, the cap stands at £1,277 a year for those on standard variable tariffs, its highest ever level, and that's an

increase of £230 across the year. It's also £1,309 for those customers with a prepayment

metre. It will be in October. It isn't now, obviously, but we'll get more into that in a second.

So even off Gem are recommending switching to save hundreds of pounds. So what is the point of it? Lee, I remember way back when the temporary energy price freeze was first proposed by Ed Miliband eight years ago, derided as Marxist, a gimmick, meddling, jiggery,

pokery by none other than the former and the current prime ministers. Now fast forward four years,

the price cap is in the Conservative manifesto. A couple of years after that, ta-da, it is introduced.

So firstly, just remind us exactly what the energy price cap is, who it affects,

and what problem was it trying to fix?

Essentially, Georgie, the energy price cap is a limit which energy firms can charge people that are on

a standard variable tariff or, as you say say on prepayment meters and that is done by

limiting how much they can charge on a unit rate per how much electricity use and gas and essentially

what's happened is that this price cap that gets set every six months from off gym has become more

of a target price for the main energy suppliers rather than a

limit a ceiling as to where prices can go. What's happened? So we've had the price cap announced

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