At present gas prices are going up by 13.6% in Britain. They’re rising by just 2% in the Netherlands. Prices are 25% higher here than on the continent. By the end of the year household bills will be £1,323 a year. This is twice as high as when Labour was elected in 1997. Some estimate household bills could hit £1,500 next winter.

Energy output is dominated by the big six suppliers: British Gas, NPower, E.on, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern and EDF. Four of these are foreign owned. They say they compete. Allen Asher, chief executive of Energywatch replies that competition is a myth. They engage in “tacit collusion” and make up “a comfortable oligopoly” keeping prices high, he alleged to a House of Commons Committee. National Energy Action added that customers were being treated as “cash cows.” They are right. There would only be £30 a year difference in your bills, whichever supplier you chose.

National Energy Action pointed out that regulator Ofgem was “unacceptably sanguine at this clear distortion of the market.” So is the government. The big six are robber barons. By their greed they have put 4.5 million people in this country into fuel poverty, defined as spending more than 10% of your disposable income on heating bills. So what is the government doing? They are talking to the robber barons! Not surprisingly, this has not helped the fuel poor, or the rest of us who are being ripped off.   

What has been happening is this. Foreign energy companies have been buying UK North Sea gas in the summer when prices are lower and then storing it. Germany has 99 days’ storage facilities, France 122 days’ and Britain just 13 days. So ‘British’ energy companies (remember, 4 out of 6 are foreign owned) have to go cap in hand to the Continent for energy supplies in the winter when demand is highest. The big six supply to households, they don’t generate their own energy. Quite naturally the foreign companies shaft them, refusing to sell at the low prices in their home markets, so the big six in turn shaft British consumers, whom they regard as ‘cash cows’.

Meanwhile British energy-using firms are complaining that they can’t compete with continental rivals because they pay so much more for fuel. The British government is supinely waiting the energy firms in Europe to ‘liberalise,’ like waiting for tigers to become vegetarian. Why on earth should they do that when the New Labour has been so stupid as to put British consumers, and the whole British economy, at their mercy?

It is blindingly obvious what should be done. The useless British oligopoly energy firms should be nationalised, the government should set up a state monopoly energy company and start building storage facilities, so ‘British’ North Sea gas can’t be used as a way of robbing British consumers. Then we can all have a warm home at an affordable price. What’s the problem?