What was claimed
Labour promised to keep energy prices frozen.
Our verdict
This appears to be based on an old pledge made by Labour in response to rising energy prices in 2022. No such promise featured in the party’s recent election manifesto.
Claims Labour pledged to freeze energy bills appears to refer to old policy
28 August 2024
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’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. 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.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because this is an old pledge made by Labour in response to rising energy prices in 2022, and no such promise featured in the party’s recent election manifesto.