Wednesday 3 August 2011

Miliband's new energy policy could be a vote winner

A Hackgate-galvanised Ed Miliband has picked a new Goliath to aim his slingshot at. In a little-noticed newspaper interview, the Labour leader pledged to demolish the Big Six energy suppliers' control of the domestic electricity and gas market: "Six energy companies control 99.9 per cent of the consumer market. This cannot be right and we must take action to open up the market over the coming months," he said. Household bills will fall as result, he claimed.

The phone-hacking scandal has provided Team Miliband with some traction. His story of the powerful-versus-the-powerless is gaining momentum. Attacking what he sees as the unfettered interests of the over-powerful started with banks, and flourished with newspaper proprietors. The energy companies are now firmly in his sights.

It was a carefully-chosen political target. A recent poll by Populus found that 63 per cent of 2,000 respondents were "very concerned" about rising gas and electricity prices. The issue is nearly twice as important to the British public as the state of the NHS, unemployment rates and public sector cuts, which have all received far greater media attention. Miliband, reacting quickly to recent energy price rises, has grabbed a topic that wouldn't normally attract attention until the autumn, when the weather turns colder.

In his zeal to keep bills down, Labour's leader must not ignore the cost of green policies in higher energy prices. Currently climate policies add around 14 per cent on to household electricity prices (and 4 per cent on gas prices), according to government figures. By 2020, policies will increase electricity prices by more than 30 per cent. For businesses, the percentage rise is around 40 per cent.

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