New Bill seeks mandatory social tariffs across UK energy, broadband, and mobile
The backbench Scottish National Party (SNP) MP for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey, Graham Leadbitter, has tabled a new Private Members Bill (PMB) that seeks to make it mandatory for energy, broadband, and mobile providers to offer cheaper Social Tariffs to consumers in receipt of certain state benefits (e.g. Universal Credit).
Ofcom has already been reasonably successful in encouraging quite a lot of broadband providers, as well as a few mobile operators, to offer Social Tariffs (see note below). Admittedly the issue isn’t quite as relevant to mobile providers, where it’s already possible to buy some incredibly cheap mobile plans, although politicians haven’t always recognised that fact.
Despite this, the newly proposed Utilities (Social Tariff) Bill appears to be seeking for utility providers to offer Social Tariffs as part of a mandatory, rather than voluntary, requirement. The bill, which was first tabled yesterday by Graham Leadbitter MP and backed by several fellow MPs from the SNP, has not yet been published and is due to get a second reading on Friday 27th November 2026.
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Ofcom’s last annual report on this subject in Feb 2026 estimated that, out of households in receipt of UC, just 532,000 had taken a social tariff (8.6% of those eligible at the time). A standard commercial broadband plan usually costs an unemployed person claiming UC an average of £27 per month (8.3% of their monthly disposable income), while a social tariff costing c.£15 reflects just 4.6%.
Utilities (Social Tariff) Bill Statement
Graham Leadbitter, supported by Kirsty Blackman, Brendan O’Hara, Seamus Logan, Lara Bird, Dave Doogan and Chris Law, presented a Bill to require utility companies to provide social tariffs for energy, broadband and mobile bills to support customers who are disabled, elderly or on a low income; and for connected purposes.
However, as both the regulator and the National Audit Office (NAO) have recently pointed out (here and here), the biggest obstacle to the take-up of such tariffs isn’t so much how many providers offer these plans, but rather the lack of awareness and promotion by supporting providers. Back in April 2026, only 34% of eligible broadband users were found to be aware of such tariffs.
The idea of making Social Tariffs mandatory has of course been proposed before, including in 2022 by the Labour Party, before they took power in 2024. Labour’s proposal also sought to rope in wholesale providers, so that retail providers didn’t have to suffer the costs alone, although the technical implementation of that could be challenging.
One of the other problems with this approach is that today’s market is chocked full of smaller providers that would struggle to introduce such a tariff, particularly given the low margins nature of residential broadband. Quite a lot of alternative network based broadband packages are already very cheap, so there’s also some debate around whether or not this would even be necessary.
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At the time of writing this bill is still in its early stages and so hasn’t yet been fully drafted (i.e. it’s not yet fully published for the public), which makes it tricky to analyse. However, the reality is that only a minority of Private Members Bills ever become law (they can be tabled by any MP, not only those from the Government), but they do often serve a purpose by creating publicity around an issue and encouraging wider debate.
The key things to watch thus centre around how much support the new Bill picks up from other MPs as it progresses. Finally, a quick reminder. We know social tariffs can be a divisive topic for some, but that is not an excuse to abuse the comment system in order to post offensive remarks toward those who take state benefits. Such posts are against our rules and will be removed.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Is this outside the competency of the Scottish Parliament? If not, I wonder why they don’t start there.
Westminster and Ofcom have responsibility for telecoms, so it makes sense to push it as a UK bill.
all these “social” tariffs do is shift additional cost on to working people who have to pay their own bills. There clearly need to be some protections for the lifelong disabled etc but it’s unreasonable to expect working people to subsidise the broadband, mobile phone, gas and electricity costs of families who in some cases have never had a working adult.
Exactly – the same working people are already paying for the benefits of these this would benefit.
There’s many millions on these benefits, it will be an utterly two tier system if this were to happen.
Government is like a fox in a henhouse, eating one chick a day. The question is: can the chickens grow faster than the fox can satisfy its hunger, or… will it all collapse? Legalised robbing certainly has physical limits.
Failed economic states tend to share a common feature of price capping of food, fuel, and other essentials (although more usually population wide rather than means tested).
And tying discounts to social benefits can be a barrier to accepting work and risk loosing the benefit, even when theorically “tapered” in the manner of UC.
And the more pressing change is to provide for financial relief for people who need to use utilities that are not price capped, i.e. tanked heating oil/gas, well water (locally electriucally pumped), septic tanks (needing periodic emptying). Grants for substitution (heat pumps, batteries) as the first order along with reduction of administrative barriers to change.
Just saying.
This is a terrible idea. Utility providers already work on thin margins, enforced by the price cap. If you’re going to make them sell below cost for some people, then they have to add a premium to other customers.
But I think the worse issue is: the more you tie people into these discounts, the greater the disincentive to look for work. If every time you take a job (even for just a week or two) you have to change to a more expensive broadband package and lose all your other discounts, it’s much easier and safer just to stay as you are. Social tariffs are simultaneously hiding and entrenching the problem.
In short: if you want people on benefits to have more purchasing power, then give them more money. Fund it visibly through direct taxation, not indirectly through the bills of other customers of the same services.
Why work when you can just “get more money”
taxes are high enough
Taxpayer’s money has never been used to pay for social security benefits and welfare and taxpayers money has never been used to fund central government spending.
The UK is a spend first tax later economy.
The UK government is the money supply in the UK issued by the government owned Bank of England with Sterling (GBP/£) being accepted for the settlement of international debt.
Government spending expands the money supply through Quantitative Easing.
Taxation along with savings and investments contract the money supply through Quantitative Tightening to reduce the effects of inflation and currency devaluation.
Richard J Murphy on his YouTube channel and Tax Research has explanations of how government finance works.
Madness, I mean those on poor circumstances should receive subsidised form of boardband as it has become an absolute essential need in recent years especially as universal credit requires internet connectivity to function through its online portal. The thing is that the ISP is entirely responsible run by private companies meaning that their business model purely relies on profit margin meaning that any form of charity, especially forced charity creates hardship within the business. If the government if willing to cover the remaining costs to ensure the business makes a resonable profit then sure, go for it.
Another comment, it is easy to find a Mobile network provider with a decent deal less than a tenner a month with more GB of data than you need. Social tarrifs seems to be not so much needed in this area
This appears to be a presentation bill. Barring exceptional circumstances, no parliamentary time will be made available for it. It won’t be debated. It probably won’t even actually ever be drafted, let alone printed.