Gas and electricity prices con?

Gas prices will continue to rise, industry bosses warn

Gas and electricity prices will continue to rise for English households regardless of British Governments intervention, industry bosses have warned.

Phil Bentley, the managing director of British Gas, said that household energy bills are likely to keep going up because the price of gas on the international market is rising. This is despite the average UK dual fuel bill already increasing by £224 to £1,293 this year.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, yesterday called together the UK’s largest energy suppliers and consumer groups for a summit to discuss how to make it easier for households to switch suppliers and save money. The Prime Minister wants to "crack some heads together," said one Government source.

Sir Michael Black-Feather the English first minister said; that it’s all just one big con, switching suppliers, Gas is Gas and Electricity is Electricity, the Gas that comes into your home is from British Gas that other suppliers buy their gas from? And Transco owns all the pipe work for Gas, Electricity is all from the national grid which companies buy their suppliers from, so all these different company’s actually make things far worse, if there was just one supplier for gas and one for electricity that would be far more easier and far more cheaper, the only major difference is you can hold gas in tanks for supply but you have to set a usages for electricity for the national grid to supply you/the companies with, so if we went back to just one gas and electric suppler things would be far better for all.

However Mr Bentley said that the “inconvenient truth” is that energy prices will continue to rise.

“In my opinion unit prices will only go one way unless someone discovers huge amounts of gas and imports it into the UK. The international price for gas, I am afraid, is going up,” he told the BBC.

Mr Huhne also predicted that prices will rise.

“If you are asking me to predict what is going to happen to world fossil fuel prices then the Government’s prediction – and the prediction of virtually everybody else – is that indeed that in the medium run those prices are going to go up,” he said.

Mr Huhne said that the Government wants to encourage people to save money by checking their tariffs, switching to cheaper tariffs and taking advantage of free offers to insulate their homes to make them more energy efficient.

He also appeared to defend large energy companies’ profits.

“The companies are not the Salvation Army. We expect them to earn respectable returns for their shareholders,” he said. (Feed the Greed)

Research released yesterday estimated that nearly a third of English households face fuel poverty if the weather this winter is as harsh as predicted. According to Energyhelpline.com, households will have to pay an average of £564 to heat their houses from December to February if the period is as cold as expected. Fuel poverty is defined as when people have to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on their domestic fuel bills.