Figures released by the Labour party last week show that the largest energy suppliers have notched up £3.3 billion in profits since the Conservative-led Coalition came into power.
Caroline Flint MP accused David Cameron of “totally out of touch with millions of people and small businesses who are struggling with soaring energy bills”
The combined profits of E.ON, EDF Energy, ScottishPower, British Gas, Scottish & Southern and Npower have gone up 73% in the last three years, according to Shadow Energy And Climate Change Secretary Caroline Flint.
The average domestic energy bill has increased from £1,105 to £1,420 in that time. An increase of 28.5% in the same period.
Mrs Flint said the Prime Minister was failing to act on “rip-off energy bills”.
She said: “He’s totally out of touch with millions of people and small businesses who are struggling with soaring energy bills. His failure to reform Britain’s broken energy market is leaving hard-pressed bill-payers massively out of pocket.”
Flint may be forgetting that much of the increase in energy bills over the last 10 years happened during the last Labour administration, and she didn’t seem to offer any solutions other than “Vote Labour”, so this could be just political point-scoring.
She added: “With warnings of more price rises this winter, it’s clearer than ever that Britain needs a One Nation Labour government to break the dominance of the energy giants, protect the public from being ripped off and create a tough new energy watchdog with the power to force energy companies to pass on savings to consumers.”
Flint may also be disregarding the fact that Ofgem, the energy watchdog, has done much to make the energy market simpler and fairer in the last 3 years than it appeared to while Labout were in power. Read stories tagged with “Ofgem” here.
Angela Knight of Energy UK said: “This is a disappointing and inaccurate bashing of an industry which brings heat and light to 27 million homes and business, pays billions each year to the Exchequer and creates employment for over 600,000 people.”
“If a company is to stay in business it has to make a profit. And the more a company has to invest then it has to make more profit to do so.”
Sources: ‘Big Six’ energy firms enjoy £3.3bn profits as bills rise – EnergyLiveNews | Labour attacks energy firm profits – Yorkshire Post | Energy UK on profits in the industry – Energy UK