Labour leader Ed Miliband pledged to freeze electricity and energy bills till 2017 if Labour wins the next election.
At the Labour Party Annual conference 2013 in Brighton, Miliband addressed energy in his speech by declaring “bills will not rise, it will benefit millions of families and millions of businesses”.
The freeze would last until the beginning of 2017, as Miliband claimed the UK needs: “successful energy companies but there will never be public consent for that unless you get a fair deal”.
The labour leader also pledged to “take all carbon out of energy by 2030”.
In response to the speech Big Six utility, Npower released a statement that it is “very easy for politicians to come up with simple-sounding solutions to difficult problems.”
Npower proposed changes to the “three main factors that influence prices: fixing inefficient housing stock, the investment required to replace the UK's energy infrastructure and the cost of buying energy on the global market.”
“If the Labour Party can commit to reducing policy costs on household energy bills, stopping the smart meter roll-out, preventing commodity cost increases and accept that there won't be any investment in new power stations and infrastructure, then we could freeze our prices,” Npower said.
The statement ended asking: “But will this make things better for Britain?”
Labour’s secretary of state for energy and climate, Caroline Flint also gave a speech at the conference saying “We will break up the Big Six”.
Flint also highlighted electricity price rises making it harder for many to pay for bills and stay out of debt, and called for “action on electricity prices” and for over 75 year olds to be put on the lowest tariffs, and that four out of five people were not on the lowest tariff as promised by the current government – but on the wrong tariff and over paying for their energy.
Flint specified the Green Deal and its failure to insulate 10,000 homes and called for “radical comprehensive reforms” and “no more secret price setting” in the energy market. Also championing for an end of the current system of companies owning power plants and selling electricity to themselves and then onto customers, with no incentive to keep energy bills down, saying that power stations should be separate from the distributors who send energy bills, and that energy bills should have a singular code so they are easier to understand, making it easier for consumers to switch.
Flint also specified the need for an ‘Energy Security Board’ to identify energy needs and secure its production and investment for the future and endorsed investing in UK produced energy and for low carbon produced UK energy.