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Energy Prices

I am delighted to have the chance to respond to what has been, broadly, an excellent, high-quality and wide-ranging debate. Some contributions were perhaps overly political, but for the most part they were thoughtful. That reflects the genuine concern on both sides of the House, and the fact that in every single part of the country, people are worried about fuel prices this Christmas and this winter. They want the Government and the Opposition to work together as effectively as possible to try to deal with those issues. That is why we have said that we will not oppose the motion—I could happily have written much of it myself. The motion states that the energy market is in urgent need of reform. That is why we ignored the Labours party's claim before the election that there was no case for reform and have started the most wide-ranging reform process of the past 20 years. The motion refers to concerns about Ofgem's study into prices and margins. We encouraged Ofgem to carry out that work, and it was under this Government, not the previous Government, that it was started. The motion states that"““energy tariffs are confusing and unfair””." Everyone who has spoken in this debate has talked about the difficulty of switching suppliers owing to the complexity of the system. That is an issue on which we really want to see progress. It also calls on us ““to investigate mis-selling””. We are putting that right, although it would have been within the gift of the previous Administration to have addressed it—but they did not take that opportunity. The motion asks that we apply a simple format to tariffs so that people can compare them easily. Again, that is work that we are taking forward through Ofgem.