5%: ‘Too little too late’ as British Gas caves in to price cut demands

British Gas is to cut household gas prices by 5% in a move it says will benefit 6.8 million customers.

The firm, which is Britain’s biggest energy supplier, said the cut would reduce average annual bills by £37 and benefit 6.8 million customers - piling the pressure on rivals to follow suit.

It threw the energy sector back into the political spotlight four months ahead of the general election in which Labour will pledge to cap tariffs.

Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the move and said it would not have been possible under Labour’s proposed price freeze.

But Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “A 5% fall is too little and it is too late. It is not nearly good enough. Wholesale prices have fallen by 20%.”

Regulator Ofgem said the cut was a “step in the right direction” after it spent months calling on suppliers to explain the growing gap between falling wholesale gas prices and those charged to households.

The announcement comes a week after Big Six rival E.ON became the first to pass on a slide in wholesale energy costs by announcing an immediate 3.5% cut in gas tariffs from January 13.

SSE, npower, EDF and Scottish Power make up the rest of the firms that dominate UK energy supply.

British Gas, which is owned by Centrica, provides gas and electricity to around nine million households. The cut will apply from February 27.

It said 1.6 million customers on one of its fixed tariffs will not benefit from the cut though will be able to switch. There are also 740,000 electricity only customers who will not receive a cut.

The move comes less than a month into the tenure of new Centrica chief executive Iain Conn, a former BP executive.

He said: “We’ve been watching the significant moves in the international energy market extremely closely for some time, with the aim of helping customers with a price cut at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Mr Conn’s predecessor, Sam Laidlaw, had warned last month that the threat of a price freeze could have pushed some suppliers into buying more energy in advance, limiting their ability to take advantage of lower wholesale gas prices.

At £37 per household, today’s announcement falls short of industry estimates of the £136 of savings that could be passed on.

But British Gas finance director Michael Uzielli said the prospect of a price freeze had no impact on the timing or the scale of the cut, saying: “It’s not about politics.”

Mr Uzielli said tariffs were based on “costs and the competitive envrionment”. Last autumn Centrica had revealed a further loss in customer accounts taking the exodus to 250,000 for 2014 to date.

Martin Lewis, founder of the website moneysavingexpert.com, said: “I doubt we’ll see the big cuts that the drop in wholesale prices warrants before the general election.

“Most providers are petrified of the potential Labour government’s price freeze, so they’re worried if they make large cuts now, they’ll be locked in, even if wholesale prices rose again.”

The announcement comes two weeks after Chancellor George Osborne launched a probe into whether key sectors such as energy firms were passing on the costs of falling wholesale prices to consumers.