These are the largest energy price increases ever in this country and, as a result, the coming winter will be hard for all households. Yorkshire will be particularly affected – government statistics show that it is the second worst region for fuel poverty in the UK.

The main reason for this, and other increases, is, indeed, the rising global price of gas – which has rocketed by 72 per cent in the last year. It has been clear for some time that big increases were on the way but that doesn't make the announcement of the actual rise any less of a shock.

Global factors will continue to put pressure on energy prices for some time, as the huge economic growth of countries such as India and China will push up their energy demand by as much as 15 per cent a year.

But the reality is that Britain is being hit harder than necessary because the Government has not taken the necessary steps to reduce the impact of rising prices.

The best way to escape higher prices is to consume less energy, and the best way to consume less is to have better energy-efficient homes.

But the sad truth is that only 40 per cent of our homes are properly insulated, so every year, literally billions of pounds of energy leaks out through our roofs and walls. In Yorkshire, where older housing stock predominates, this wastage tends to drive up the price of family fuel bills.

In other countries, governments have taken the lead by pushing for energy-efficient homes, while we still have conservation standards that Scandinavia would have considered unacceptably low 20 years ago.

But Gordon Brown has not done anything to help. Instead of doing more to insulate the poorest homes, the Government actually cut the budget of the Warm Front Programme – the scheme that provides those in fuel poverty with cost-effective energy-efficiency equipment – by £300m.

In the recent Energy Bill in the House of Commons, the Government actually refused even to have a discussion about energy efficiency.

The Government has also failed to put in place a strategy to protect people from rising prices.

In 2005, the Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, said Britain was "awash with gas". Within days, we had almost run out, and the main reason for that was a critical lack of gas storage.

While countries like Germany have 99 days of onshore gas storage and France has 122, in the UK we have a paltry 14 days of gas reserves. This makes us more vulnerable to changing prices. The UK cannot fill its reserves when prices are low, so as to have extra stocks available to put into the market when the prices rise.

In one of the worst injustices, as a result of the lack of our storage facilities, gas extracted in UK waters is shipped abroad for storage and then re-sold to us at a higher price.

Some steps have been taken to correct that shortfall, but the Government's failure to take responsibility for the most essential aspects of our energy infrastructure has left us much more vulnerable to price changes than other countries.

The UK also faces a need to reform its energy market. For some years, the UK has had some of the lowest energy prices in Europe, because our energy market here was deregulated and the market opened up to competition.

Now we are losing that advantage – business consumers are now paying 15 per cent more than the EU average for their electricity and gas, whereas just three years ago they were paying 15 per cent less than the average.

But a recent report by the Business Select Committee claimed that "there are very real problems in the energy markets at all levels which need to be addressed". This echoes David Cameron's call for an investigation into the competitiveness of the gas market.

The Government has left it very late to protect families and businesses from the impact of this year's increases – although it is welcome that British Gasis delaying the increases until next year for "vulnerable customers". But the consequence is going to be real hardship
for all.

I realise that these are not solutions to people facing higher energy bills – it will be left to the next Government to address that effectively – but we do at least need to understand why we have got
into this terrible mess.

As a result of years of inaction, every home will now pay a terrible price in terms of colder rooms and higher bills.


Charles Hendry MP is the Shadow Energy Minister.