Ofgem betrays public interest

This will be an electrically-charged political occasion in which members of Parliament’s energy select committee are expected to show no mercy towards the bosses of these privatised utilities, not least after Sir John Major called for a windfall tax to be levied so funds can be raised to help the needy stay warm this winter.

Yet, as well as the “Big Six”, MPs should also be summoning Andrew Wright – chief executive of industry regulator Ofgem – to explain why his watchdog has failed to defend the interests of consumers.

His organisation has serious questions to answer, even though it has finally compelled ScottishPower to pay £8.5m back to its long-suffering customers after its doorstep and telesales agents deliberately used misleading information to win new business. These criticisms first came to light in October 2009. Why, therefore, has it taken Ofgem four years to act? Did this delay exacerbate the mis-selling scandal?

The same with its announcement that energy firms will prevented from increasing prices during fixed-term contracts. This is only coming about because of public pressure – the question is why did Ofgem not go through the small-print at the outset and take immediate action?

And then there is the “reward for failure” culture within the energy industry. The first of the major firms to be penalised by Ofgem was EDF who received a £2m sanction in July 2009 for customer service. Yet this is the same outfit which now finds itself at the vanguard of the very lucrative nuclear power station deal signed off by Ministers this week.

Given this backdrop, it is not surprising that the public are so disillusioned with the over-charging policies pursued by the “Big Six”, the toothlessness of Ofgem and the decades of dithering in Whitehall that fuelled Britain’s energy crisis and which is now forcing the Government to pay over the odds in order to guarantee future supplies.

Cost of rebuilding British society

IN many respects, today’s concerns from a Westminster select committee about the future of the Government’s flagship troubled families programme are indicative of the failure of policy-makers to come up with more robust solutions to Britain’s “broken society”.

This is one of David Cameron’s top priorities. He said so in a major policy speech after the 2011 summer riots. As a Westminster select committee headed by Sheffield MP Clive Betts has now reported, Ministers initially set aside £448m to help 120,000 high-risk families – presumably after careful calculation of the likely costs.

Yet they now expect local authorities to transform the lives of a further 400,000 families – for just £200m. Furthermore there is no guarantee that funding will continue beyond 2016 and maintain any momentum engineered by local authorities.

There will be some who will question the wisdom of so much money being spent on individuals who contribute so little society. However this short-sightedness misses the point. Unless the Government acts, these families will become an even bigger drain on the public purse and undermine Iain Duncan Smith’s valiant attempts to overhaul the benefits system with initiatives and incentives that are intended to make work pay.

Yet, as Mr Betts makes clear, councils will be unwilling to invest time and money without long-term assurances about funding – a concern that Mr Cameron needs to address when he next returns to his “broken society” agenda.

Tesco shops for profits at schools

JUST how did families manage in the not-so-distant era when there was no Sunday shopping or late-night opening and many stores only traded until lunch-time on a prescribed day of the week?

Contrast this with the open-all-hours policy pursued by the major supermarkets, invariably

to the detriment of struggling local retailers, the advent of online deliveries and now the expansion of rival “click and collect” schemes which are taking customer convenience to new levels.

After Asda successfully launched this service, Tesco is now taking the fight to its major rival in its Yorkshire heartland by launching a rival scheme that will enable customers to collect their weekly groceries from Huntington School in York.

Many will raise their eyebrows and conclude that Tesco is taking its pursuit of profits a step too far and undermining competition on the high street. Others, meanwhile, will say this approach reflects the needs of modern lifestyles that have become increasingly hectic, and which have allowed the supermarkets to become so omnipresent.

Yet, at the end of the day, it is the customer – rather than any London politician – who will decide whether such advances are meritorious or not. And, over the past 30 years, shoppers have repeatedly sided with the supermarket – even if this has been at the expense of local stores which used to be so cherished.