The remit of the committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Business and Trade, and any departmental bodies.
The House of Commons agreed to the committee's establishment on 25 June 2009,[1] following Prime Minister Gordon Brown's replacement of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on 5 June 2009.
The committee found that the industry regulator Ofgem had been incompetent in its supervision of the finances of supplier companies, and that the government overlooked this lack of supervision because it prioritised competition over market regulation.
The report also criticised Ofgem's design of the energy price cap, recommending that the government consider introducing a social tariff; stated that the government's May 2022 support package for customers was no longer sufficient; and criticised the absence of a home insulation programme.
[8][9] In response, Ofgem accepted that its previous financial resilience regime was not sufficiently robust, and had contributed to some of the supplier failures since August 2021.