I congratulate the Minister on his appointment to his post, but I shall reserve further congratulation until I have heard how he answers this debate. I could not have chosen a much more appropriate time to call for it, because in the past week Ofgem has published its report on complaint handling by energy companies, Consumer Focus has published a major report on energy pricing, and Ofgem has intervened to criticise aspects of that report. I shall discuss those events and link them to some constituency experience.

First, let me sketch where we have come from. Until October 2008 consumers concerned about the practices of their energy company could approach Energywatch to assist them in their complaints. During the long period in which British Gas struggled with its billing system, I made heavy use of Energywatch to tackle repeated errors and overcharging. It handled individual complaints and sought to champion consumer interests generally.

The Government decided to merge Energywatch with other consumer bodies to form Consumer Focus. They transferred to Ofgem—until then largely a regulator of competition within the energy sector—the task of oversight of complaint handling. The argument was that energy was a mature market: consumers could readily vote with their feet if they were unhappy, and companies should be the main focus of complaint handling. Presumably, it was argued that the existence of Energywatch, as a quasi governmental substitute, led companies to invest fewer resources in customer service and complaint handling.

Such a robust, market-centred strategy would have much to commend it if the underlying assumptions were right. Those would be that consumers had appropriate information to prompt choice; that transferring to another supplier was straightforward; that there were sufficient variations in price and customer service to make changing suppliers worthwhile; and that the companies' handling of customers was of a sufficiently high standard as not to require assistance. None of those assumptions is true.

A small number of consumers switch suppliers, often playing the special offers. However, most of the market is inert, with people staying with whatever company inherited the supply from the former state provision on privatisation. Most consumers find it hard to make comparisons. The study by Which ? of consumer views on their bills showed widespread difficulty in understanding how the bills work and how consumers' own behaviour might influence their bills. One customer said:

"It is impossible from my bills to see exactly how much I am paying per 'unit' of gas or electricity, or to compare offers by different suppliers. We need a system which is completely transparent and answers the questions: how much have I used? How much did each 'unit' cost? and sets this out so I can then compare with other suppliers' charges, like for like."

Another said:

"I find it very difficult to understand my energy bills. I endeavour to be as economical as possible but have no idea whether I am succeeding."

Those are typical comments from the survey.

There is also some mistrust in the market. People doubt how genuinely competitive it is, and some recall the hard selling of the initial period of competition. They have also heard, as most MPs have, of problems arising when a supplier is changed—I have dealt with some such cases myself. Energy provision is so important that few like to take risks—it is not like testing a new brand of breakfast cereal. This is a sticky market, and as such it is exploited by the companies. There is evidence from one of Ofgem's studies of overpricing in companies' core, inherited market, deliberately taking advantage of the conservatism of loyal customers while offers are pitched at areas of the country where they seek a greater market share.

What advantage would a consumer gain from changing supplier? There may be a short-term price advantage. The bundling of electricity and gas may offer gains, but those offers are not relevant in areas without mains gas. However, the prices tend to move in tandem and there would appear to be few long-term gains. As for customer service, it is uniformly abysmal.

Ofgem's study of complaint handling—accompanied by characteristically tepid advice to the companies and an expectation of better results next year—presents data that suggest this must be the worst service offered by any industry in our country. The best company at handling domestic complaints, E.ON, managed to leave 57 per cent. of customers surveyed unhappy with the quality of its complaint handling. The worst, npower, to which I will return in a moment, left a staggering 70 per cent. dissatisfied with the way that their complaint had been dealt with. There is clearly no competitive pressure whatever to provide high standards in that key measure. The chief executive of Ofgem, however, is perhaps more optimistic. He opined:

"It is in suppliers' best interests to ensure that the service they provide is of a high standard. This is clearly an opportunity for them to raise the bar to retain existing customers and attract new ones."

Would that that were true.

Back in the spring and summer of last year, while Energywatch was facing its demise, I anticipated that problem and tabled parliamentary questions and wrote to Ofgem about how to establish proper complaint handling standards. One specific area, as an example, came up in its current survey, in which it identified the difficulty of mapping precisely what a complaint was for one customer—exactly the problem that I anticipated 12 months ago in correspondence with Ofgem.

So the Government's assumptions about the maturity of the market and the ability of consumers to lever gain is flawed. The consumer support infrastructure designed around those assumptions is struggling and, as I will illustrate, squabbling. Ofgem has the lead role. It commissions studies into the sector. It does not assist consumers directly but can address group complaints as it did on npower's price sculpting activities. Ofgem leaves individual support to an ombudsman and to Consumer Focus. There is a lengthy time limit before a complaint may be referred to an ombudsman and Consumer Focus, as a body covering most aspects of consumer assistance, is not able to give the scale of support previously offered by Energywatch to energy-specific complaints. One senses some degree of turf war behaviour between the organisations.

Last week, Consumer Focus released a study suggesting that the common consumer concern—I would be amazed if other hon. Members did not have examples of such problems—that prices seem to go up further and faster than they come down when wholesale prices vary over a period of time. Consumer Focus used Ofgem data and model assumptions to suggest that consumers were right in that view and that they were being substantially overcharged. Ofgem publicly contradicted that. The two bodies should share a common interest—to serve consumers. It scarcely breeds confidence that that goal is central to either of them if they squabble in public.

Let me now turn to one example of the industry's poor quality service to customers—npower's foray into what has been called gas price sculpting. I will not seek to explain its model in detail. I have not got time—the company offered a five page text on its website to consumers who did not understand that method of calculating their gas prices, so I certainly will not attempt to read it out. It is sufficient to say that it introduced a two-tier pricing model with a quantitative start date for the trigger for the higher scale price set by the company. Several of my constituents spotted that they might well face higher bills and complained.

As I have mentioned, the company produced material that was well nigh impenetrable. I read the five pages and, frankly, if I had been one of their customers I would not have been able to work out how it affected me. Most ordinary consumers presumably just trusted that whatever it meant, they would not be mistreated. Ofgem, at the initial prompting of Energywatch, instituted an inquiry into the practice that took nearly a year to report. When it did, it failed to condemn the company's practice, merely expressing concern about the company's failure properly to inform customers. Perhaps surprisingly, bearing in mind the mildness of the reproof, npower agreed to pay £1.2 million to 200,000 consumers—that is, about £6 a head.

An apparently minor victory for consumers, however, rapidly dissolved when scrutinised in more detail by people such as my constituents, Mr. Stratton and Mr. Vallis, who were determined on the matter. They and many others did their own calculations—to be honest, they were better than I in that respect—and were able to pursue claims against npower. One of those gentlemen received an £85 ex gratia payment. I shall come back to one of the interesting aspects of that payment at the end of my speech. Far higher sums than that are quoted on the web, particularly in cases where court action was threatened against npower.

I have drawn the apparent inadequacy and weakness of the Ofgem judgment to Ofgem's attention. The relaxed response essentially drew attention to any consumer's right to pursue the matter further with npower; there is, of course, that right, but only a minority of consumers are equipped to pursue the matter further. Our purpose, in a complex marketplace—as I have suggested, some companies seek to make it as complex as they can—is to assist the individual householder who must fight a giant company. Our purpose is not to empower the capable and well organised in our constituencies to do that, but to protect the vulnerable.

In correspondence with one of my constituents, attention was drawn to the possible legal constraints on Ofgem insisting on compensation because of time delays since the original price increase. The leisurely course of the investigation clearly did not seem to have been affected by that concern. In my correspondence with npower, I was requested to treat the payment made to my constituent as a matter of commercial confidence, and was told not to disclose it to any third party under any circumstances. I had not asked to be treated in that way and, prima facie, I would have said that it was a breach of parliamentary privilege to suggest that I should not be able to discuss what my constituent had received. I can well understand the company's embarrassment in that matter, but I have never before been told by any company that I owe any duty other than to my constituent in a matter of that kind.

So what do I seek from my hon. Friend the Minister? First, I seek clarity on consumer assistance in the marketplace; there should be no more squabbling or turf wars. Secondly, I seek recognition that the market remains complex to most consumers, and that additional specific assistance is required. Thirdly, I seek a far more robust approach to the companies on their customer complaint handling capability. Their current shocking performance will not be corrected by market pressure. Fourthly, clear obligations should be placed on companies to ensure that bills and billing models are clear. Obscurity and complexity are two of the few areas in which the companies seem genuinely to compete; they try to make what they offer customers as difficult to understand as possible. Fifthly, if there are legal constraints on a regulator when it comes to tackling activities such as npower's price sculpting, let us address them. In the meantime, the investigation by Ofgem should itself be examined. How long did it take? How were data collected? How did consumers and the company have their say? That would be a test of Ofgem's fitness for purpose in such matters.

Finally, in spite of Ofgem's qualified all-clear last year, most consumers do not believe the market to be genuinely competitive. Its price movements appear to be like an elephantine dance programme, and the normal triggers prompting quality improvements and sustained price advantages simply do not seem to function. Let us have the Competition Commission examine the market.