“Jobs are lost to the energy industry, profits boom, millions are too scared to switch on their heating, and the Opposition remain silent.”
Who will speak up for working people asks the Communist Party political economy commission?
In January 2020 the National Audit Office said that British households could have saved £800m on their energy bills over eight years if electricity network companies had been regulated with better information. The public spending watchdog attacked the level of returns that Britain’s energy regulator, Ofgem, has allowed the country’s electricity network companies to give to their shareholders and said these returns have come at the expense of consumers, noting that electricity network companies expected to make an inflation-adjusted return of 9 per cent on average to shareholders compared to an estimated return of 5-6 per cent that shareholders would make if they invested in FTSE all-share companies.
“We estimate that if Ofgem had placed greater weight on this [up-to-date] evidence, consumers could have paid at least £800m less,” said the NAO report. So Ofgem, charged with regulating the industry, either ignored or disregarded the fact that the big power companies were making a rate of return almost twice that of other large quoted companies?
That’s not regulation, that’s collusion. And now they are allowing the second big price rise this year throwing more people into fuel poverty but maintaining the industry’s profit margins.