Opposition Day — [10th allotted day] — Energy Price Freeze

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:42 pm on 6 November 2013.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Albert Owen Albert Owen Labour, Ynys Môn 3:42, 6 November 2013

There we are. I am sure that the Minister agrees with the Prime Minister on that, and I thank my hon. Friend. Another levy that this Government have introduced unilaterally and which has pushed prices up is the carbon floor price. It is an Osborne levy if ever there was one. Again, the Government boasted in the Budget about how they were using these levies to control companies and push up costs on business. Those who blame Europe should remember that this is in addition to the European emissions trading scheme, and that companies in Britain are paying more because of what this Government have done this year—the levy came into being in April. It is no use their blaming Europe, or previous Governments. They must take responsibility, because all our constituents are paying the price of this Government's energy policy. That is why we are having the debate today.

I want to mention small businesses, because they are suffering more than the domestic customer. Average rises for small businesses, which do not have the luxury of comparison sites on which they can switch easily, have been up to 20%. I hope that the Government—and, indeed, my right hon. Friend Caroline Flint—will consider helping those businesses. They cannot absorb the cost, so they pass it on to the customers. That means that we pay for those rises.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change and we had a robust discussion with the energy companies last week. Let us be honest. We hear the Government talking about Labour’s big six, and the Prime Minister leads that. They forget that in 1993, Sir John Major—that Marxist, who has been accused of being a red by many people for wanting to intervene in the market—set up the integrated system we have now and allowed the then big three to dominate the energy market. Let us not take any lessons about how the big six were set up. Flawed privatisation policies and the former Prime Minister’s interventions allowed the companies to be both generators and retailers. That is the situation. I know that it does not sit comfortably with the Conservative party, but it is a fact and I challenge the Minister to say otherwise.

We have talked about green levies and wholesale prices.