Lower electricity prices for industry are crucial, but the government's plan lacks detail

The colour palette for the front cover was the same, and whizzy light beams were again used to denote go-getting national ambition.

- Nils Pratley

But the big difference between Greg Clark's 2017 industrial strategy and Jonathan Reynolds's "modern" version yesterday was supposed to be the latter's emphasis on reducing the sky-high cost of electricity for UK industry.

Does it deliver? Well, it acknowledges the problem, which is a start. But after that it is impossible to avoid the woeful position British business has with electricity prices.

The statistics are aired alongside every story about de-industrialisation from the Port Talbot steelworks to the Grangemouth oil refinery. The manufacturers' lobby group Make UK estimates that energy costs for UK steelmakers were £66 per megawatt hour in 2024-25, compared with estimated German prices of £50 per megawatt hour and French ones of £43.

So a plan to "slash industrial electricity prices" for 7,000 companies and "move us from being an outlier to right in the middle of the pack", as Reynolds put it, is definitely a step towards sanity. The detail matters, however. For at least three reasons, this looks more like a sketch of a plan rather than a fully worked-up scheme.