Martin Lewis says water companies' baffling language stops millions getting help with bills

Water firms’ baffling language is stopping millions of people from getting help with their bills, Martin Lewis has told MPs.

Mr Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert, told the Public Accounts Committee that companies were asking for people’s “equivalised income” when assessing them for social tariffs.

He did not know what the term meant, he said.

“The point I’m making is if none of us in this room knows what that means – and I don’t know what that means – then I think it’s probably not a good way to communicate it to vulnerable people.”

Asked if companies used such language because they did not want to offer up the help, Mr Lewis said: “I tend to think it’s because they’re crap at communicating. I tend to think this isn’t conspiracy, it’s just crap.

“I think that what the regulator could do is crack down on crapness.”

He went on: “We’ve had this in so many sectors. You could start with a communications audit of how these water companies are communicating the social tariffs.

“Far better if they all had the same social tariff and we could have centralised, really good communication.”

Mr Lewis told the committee: “According to Policy in Practice, 3.8 million households are missing out on water social tariffs. That’s outrageous. Broadband: 7.5 million households.

“The biggest problem on energy is we don’t have a social tariff.

“We went for a backstop tariff – I call it the pants cap, not the price cap – we went for a backstop tariff that was meant to be so that the people who never switch will not be quite as hideously ripped off as they would be under a no price cap situation.

“But now we’ve moved into a quasi regulated tariff for 60 per cent of the population. And actually, in energy, we should be identifying who are the legitimate victims of competition and who are the illegitimate victims of competition.

“Alternatively then we have your struggling 90-year-old with dementia who pays more than I do to boil the kettle – because that’s how it works, because I, of course, am on a good tariff as you would expect – and therefore is an illegitimate victim of competition.”

He added: “We have a halfway house between a market system and price regulation and we have the worst of both worlds. So there are some really big systemic problems going on in all these sectors.”

Anne Pardoe, the head of policy at Citizens Advice, said: “Awareness of these tariffs is really low. A really big problem is a lack of standardisation, as Martin said. It makes it really difficult for people to work out what they’re entitled to and also to claim it as well.

“In water there is a critical opportunity to deal with standardisation. A lot of organisations were calling for a single social tariff and the Cunliffe Independent Water Commission also recommended this.

“The government decided not to move ahead with that at this stage. I think that was a really big missed opportunity.

“And then in broadband, it’s a voluntary scheme and there’s absolutely no incentive for broadband companies to, A, get these right and, B, promote them.

“They’ve done very little in terms of promoting these tariffs amongst their customers.”

Ms Pardoe earlier raised concerns about the increasing use of AI within chatbots “when people are trying to make contact through the websites and getting stuck in this cycle – so they’re trying to ask for help and maybe online is the way they feel most comfortable doing that, but I’m sure we’ve all done it when we’re trying to contact customer service on a website and you just end up in an endless cycle.

“We see this with our advisors as well – even our advisors can find it really difficult o get in contact with creditors including energy companies, water companies and telecoms companies.

“It’s on regulators to really monitor this very carefully. It’s really essential that people are able to contact their essential services providers when they’re having difficulty.”