The chief executive of Ofgem - the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets - has explained to MPs the scale of the "unprecedented" energy price rise crisis.
Jonathan Brearley said that “well above” hundreds of thousands of customers may be left in limbo as their energy supplier goes bust in coming months.
The price rises suppliers faced were "unprecedented", said Mr Brearley - but declined to give an estimate about how many more firms could go out of business.
He told MPs on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee. said: “We do expect a large number of customers to be affected, we’ve already seen hundreds of thousands of customers affected, that may well go well above that.
“It’s very hard for me to put a figure on it.”
The Government and Ofgem was warned as early as two years ago that the energy sector is fragile, the chief executive of supplier trade body Energy UK has said.
Emma Pinchbeck said: “I took this job a year ago. When I was hired, the chairman of Energy UK said that your biggest challenge is going to be the vulnerability of the retail market.
“I know that for a year or more before that my team have been making the case to the regulator and the Government that the sector is fragile.”
Speaking to MPs on the BEIS committee, she said: “A lot of that is about market design. No competitive market would be making an average return of minus 1%.
“There’s a short-term crisis here, which is in some ways out of our control, it’s to do with the gas prices, but it’s been exacerbated and arguably caused by our regulatory design.
“That is a resilience and security of supply risk in the future. It’s terrible news for customers in the long run.
“When we get through this, whatever support we put in place in the short term to make sure that customers are looked after, we desperately need to stop dismissing retailers when they say the market design is not fit for purpose, the market design is harming customers, the market design means we’re not making any margin and the market design leaves us vulnerable and fragile.”
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