UK mobile and broadband laws could change after Martin Lewis calls for 'ban'

Mobile and broadband laws could change after Martin Lewis calls for ‘ban’

Inflation-busting mobile and broadband price hikes are to be probed by the Chancellor after his Martin Lewis interview. Jeremy Hunt will investigate the price hikes, after being grilled by ITV The Martin Lewis Money Show star Mr Lewis on Tuesday night’s show.

Martin asked Mr Hunt: “Why don’t we just ban them [mobile and broadband firms] from doing that?” In response, Mr Hunt said some of the costs providers face, such as staff costs “have to feed through” to customer bills. But he acknowledged that this is not the case for all costs.

As a result, the Chancellor – who will deliver his Spring Statement in March – said that he would write to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the body which looks into these things “independently of politicians”, in order to “get to the bottom of it”.

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The Chancellor also told Martin that taxes will not return to pre-pandemic levels in “one go”, however, he did signal that he would like to cut taxes further, but only when it is “affordable and responsible”. It comes after a two percentage point cut in national insurance, from 12% to 10%, took effect last Saturday.

He said: “After a period in which taxes have gone up in order to pay for the costs of the pandemic or the £3,500 of help we gave people in the cost of living crisis to a typical family, we now want to bring that tax burden back down.

“Now we can’t get all the way back to where we were pre-pandemic in one go, but we can make a start. And this is about £1,000, just under £1,000 for a typical two earner family. But we would like to go further as and when it’s affordable and responsible to do so.”

You can watch the full interview with Jeremy Hunt on The Martin Lewis Money Show Live on ITVX.