Our manifesto suggested that is a course of action which sends a market signal to encourage switching – usually from those who can afford the upfront additional costs and can benefit from the lower annual charges. It’s got economic merits in theory. In practice, it might be trickier to achieve.

The argument goes that policy costs and levies, added to electricity bills, are removed. Yes, that will reduce the price of electricity, but the question is then how are these paid?

Some argue that they should simply be switched from electricity to gas. Perversely, this would see levies designed to encourage low carbon power generation being paid for on gas bills. That’s not, I would argue, a logical position to adopt. For some policy costs, like ECO, there is a logic to the approach but there are other considerations. What about the fuel poor, relying on gas boilers for heat and hot water (and yes cooking too)? There are distributional impacts that must be considered before we lurch in this direction.

The alternative course of action is to pay the policy costs out of general taxation. This would be fairer and reduce the impact on fuel poverty. It’s always attractive to reach for the fruit of the magic money tree. Even this course of action comes with challenges. Levies and policy costs on electricity cost around £4 billion a year, so we must ask what are the opportunity costs of using this sum to reduce electricity bills compared to its other uses?

This is where the privileged position of think tanks and lobbyists hits the harsh reality faced by politicians. Ask MPs what they would do with that amount of money each year and I’m guessing that reducing electricity bills to encourage the take up of EVs and heat pumps would not score well. That’s the reality of where the UK now stands, no easy answers.