Should the government remove policy costs from business electricity bills to boost economic growth?

Some referendums split the room; this one nearly emptied it of dissenters. Four in five voters backed lifting policy costs from business electricity bills, and the agreement held from the youngest voters in the chamber to the oldest, a consensus on competitiveness that British politics rarely manages on anything touching energy or tax.

If there's a fault line at all, it's a faint one by age: the over-65s were the most sceptical group, with a third opposed, while every voter under 25 backed the change outright. That's less a generational clash than a gentle cooling of enthusiasm the older the voter gets, perhaps reflecting a wearier scepticism about whether such costs would simply be shifted rather than removed, or who ultimately foots the bill for the shortfall.

The result echoes a live argument in Westminster about how to square net zero funding with industrial competitiveness, as ministers weigh the CBI's warnings on energy costs against manifesto pledges on the transition. Voters here left little doubt which side of that trade-off they favour.

For a question about who should carry the cost of the green transition, this chamber answered with unusual unanimity: not business.