Nick Clegg calls for change in electricity pricing

ENERGY companies are raking in immoral profits from their poorest customers – that was the charge made by Nick Clegg in Reading at the weekend, as he called for tax cuts for low earners and a 2% cut in interest rates.

The Lib Dem leader, speaking at his party’s regional conference at Woodley’s Oakwood Centre before a public meeting at Reading Civic Centre on Saturday, declared: “It is immoral, it is wrong for the big six energy companies to have received, as they in effect have, a £9bn windfall subsidy through the complex mechanism by which carbon trading permits were handed to them for free.”…

He accused energy companies of “dragging their feet” on installing smart meters which stop customers being overcharged for gas and electricity based on faulty estimates.

He added: “It’s downright wrong that people on low incomes pay more for the first units of energy they use, rather than the units they use later.

“It’s the poor, the elderly, the infirm who sit with one heater in a sitting room with the rest of the house stone cold – who use a fraction of what wealthy people do in larger, fully-heated homes – who get penalised more than anyone else.

“The Government should take action now with the energy regulator and just reverse it – let people pay less for the first units instead.” [Reading Chronicle]