Energy Price Cap Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Matt Western
Main Page: Matt Western (Labour - Warwick and Leamington)Department Debates - View all Matt Western's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Energy Price Cap
Matt Western Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Greg Clark
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As I said, the poorest 10% of households spend 10% of their household expenditure on energy, whereas the richest 10% spend 3% of theirs on it. We need to look particularly at the conditions of more vulnerable consumers to ensure that they are not disadvantaged. My right hon. Friend mentioned one of the ways in which they are.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Are we not tinkering at the edges and doing a little bit of window dressing? I think that we all agree that the energy market appears to be dysfunctional. We saw that best at the beginning of this year when there was an increase in tariffs across the board that bore no relation to wholesale prices, but had everything to do with the exchange rate, particularly that with the euro, as most of our domestic companies are actually based in France or Germany. The big six are essentially operating as a cartel, not in the interests of the consumer.
Greg Clark
I am not sure that I would give them the excuse of exchange rate movements. The Competition and Markets Authority has said that suppliers have unilateral market power over this part of their customer base. This is a regulated market. Ofgem has the powers to introduce and extend the price gap, and my view is that it should use those powers now.