UK's eye-watering electricity bills are linked to privatisation: Yorkshire Post Letters

Not only are British households suffering from an eye-watering price for gas due to Trump’s illegal Iran war, but that comes on top of the fact that Britain has among the highest prices for electricity in Europe.

Overall the biggest factor accounting for our discrepant electricity prices is the historical link with the price of gas, estimated to cost an extra £13 billion for households in 2023. This is despite the fact that gas provides an ever decreasing proportion of electricity generation. It’s not simple, but Andy Burnham has set a target of decoupling the link within this parliament

Achieving parity with European prices will take longer, because there are multiple factors accounting for the price we pay. The most egregious is the profit made by the regional distribution companies.

Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, has pointed out that, despite operating what are effectively monopolies and being regulated by OFGEM, "these companies make the biggest profit margins in our economy bar none — bigger even than the banks, bigger even than Venture Capital firms, with no risk to speak of. Over the last few years their published accounts show typical profit margins of 40 per cent”.

Whilst they’ve hiked their prices to us, they’ve paid massive dividends to their parent companies — often in tax havens, rather than investing in our networks. It’s all very similar to the shameful situation with our privatised water industry.

Interesting that the leaders of both the Conservative Party and Reform UK are big admirers of Margaret Thatcher who set the disastrous ball of privatising public utilities rolling.

Dr Andrew Blewett, Matford Avenue, Exeter.

I wonder whether those sorry people who endlessly issue distorted warnings to readers about green subsidies will feel equally upset about the fact that the world’s oil and gas corporations, including BP, are set to record over £70 billion profit, per quarter, for the second time this year?

That’s a very big pile of treasure at our expense.

Does it not occur to them that fossil gravy trains on this scale are making a few people very rich - and powerful, at the expense of the rest of us who are on the receiving end of what is in effect an ugly fossil fuel cartel?

The answer is to uncouple our energy supply from this obscene system, and the combination of wars, dictators, authoritarian regimes, and Donald Trump, who assisted by a small number of obsessive mavericks here in the UK, are only too happy to have us believe that thousands of scientists are completely wrong when they tell us that fossil fuels are screwing up the world’s climate, and messing with every human, animal and plant that ultimately depends on it. Ask a farmer.

Burning hydrocarbons is not only destabilising nature, but hands a very large club to the corporate fat cats who have pulled the wool over our eyes for far too long.

Every wind generator and every solar panel is one more poke in the eye to the oil and gas bosses, and one less barrel of dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.