Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I do not wish to be unkind, but the Minister does perambulate in a mildly eccentric fashion. If he feels that he can face the House in answering questions, that would be greatly to the advantage of both the hon. Gentleman and the House.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the prices charged by the six largest energy companies.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)]

We announced in the annual energy statement that Ofgem would work with the Office of Fair Trading and the new Competition and Markets Authority to deliver the first annual competition assessment in late March, early April. These independent competition authorities have set out the remit for this assessment. They have said that they will look at prices, as well as profits and other relevant matters.

I recently wrote to those competition authorities, drawing to their attention three specific matters that have received little attention in the energy price debate but which I consider are of strategic importance, including profits, prices and market share in the domestic gas supply market. It is for the regulators to decide what steps they now wish to take in light of all the evidence.

[Diana Johnson]

Given that 31,000 winter deaths were caused by the cold during last winter and that there will be further rises in energy bills this year, why does the coalition give a higher priority to maintaining the energy cartel’s 77% increase in profits and shareholder dividends than to the lives of vulnerable people?

[Mr Davey]

We do not; I am afraid that the hon. Lady is wrong on many counts. First, the structure she describes as a cartel was created by the previous Government. The big six were created during the consolidation under Labour, so they are Labour’s big six. It is under this coalition Government that we have seen a massive increase in the number of entrants to the market; we now have 20 independent suppliers taking on Labour’s big six. That is good competition that will help people. Secondly, we take winter deaths extremely seriously. If she looks at the data, she will see that winter deaths have gone up and down over a period of years and that the highest figure over the past decade was actually when the Leader of the Opposition was doing my job. The reason they go up and down is that they are related not simply to energy costs, but to health matters such as flu epidemics. We need to ensure that we have a cross-Government approach to tackling winter deaths, which is what we are doing.