Profits of misery

IT’S a figure that should shame any civilised country. Last year, as wholesale gas prices plummeted, so-called excess winter deaths in Britain rose to a 15-year high of 43,900 – most caused by illnesses made worse by the cold.

Yet while the vulnerable died, or were forced to choose between heating and eating, profits at British Gas surged by 31 per cent to £547million.

We can only guess how much suffering would have been spared if the company had been quicker to pass on to consumers its savings in wholesale prices.

All we know is that while the cost of gas on world markets came down by some 34 per cent, BG cut its retail tariffs by only a miserly 9.75 per cent.

True, the firm is ready with excuses, claiming that wholesale prices account for only 40 per cent of its costs (though if that’s the case, there is surely huge scope for efficiency savings in its distribution and maintenance programmes).

But one question: can anyone imagine the Big Six energy firms being as slow to

increase tariffs when world prices rise as they are to cut them when they fall?

After finding households on standard variable rates have been overcharged by hundreds of millions of pounds, the competition watchdog will publish measures to curb prices.

With lives and civilised standards depending on them, they’d better work.