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TV host Jeremy Vine has raged at rising prices in energy bills today, calling on the Government to “nationalise the lot” in a diatribe about open markets.
Mr Vine said on Tuesday that the UK should “dig up our own oil, give it to our own people an stop this nonsense of selling it on a market”.
His remarks came after a woman named Sarah from Norfolk called into his Channel 5 show to vent her frustration about broken energy bill promises.
Sarah told Mr Vine that she lives on the East Anglian coast and raged at the windfarms that are blighting her sea views.
She said that the green energy suppliers were installed with the pledge that residents affected by the view would see a drop in their energy bills which has not materialised.
Sarah raged at Mr Vine: “We don’t ask anything of anybody, but I’m sick of being screwed over by big companies.”
She also expressed anger that shareholders had been paid despite her community not getting the cheaper energy they were promised.
This prompted Mr Vine to say Britain “should nationalise the lot” and capitalise on its vast oil resources, which are second only to Norway’s in Europe.
It comes as Britons usher in the New Year under the dark cloud of the energy price cap rising. The rise kicked in on Monday and the average energy user faces a hike of five percent.
That means that for a household using a typical amount of gas and electricity, the annual bill paid by direct debit has shot up from £1,834 to £1,928.
Around 29 million Britons are on the price cap – but it is important to remember there isn’t a total cap on what one can pay for energy.
The price cap simply limits what people pay for each unit of gas and electricity they use, plus it sets a maximum daily standing charge (what one pays to have their home connected to the grid).
This means the more energy one uses, the higher their bill will be.
From today, direct debit households will be charged 7.42p per kilowatt hour (kWh) for gas and 28.62p per kWh for electricity. This is up from the 6.89p per kWh and 27.35p before.
Households on prepayment meters have seen their typical annual bill rise to £1,960.
Those who pay their bills every three months by cash or cheque now have a typical annual bill of £2,058.
What is nationalisation?
The nationalisation of a resource takes that resource off the open market and puts it under the control of the state in question.
Proponents of nationalisation say that this allows for the prioritisation of proper distribution and that the removal of market factors means that prices can be set more fairly.
This is partly due to the fact that a nationalised industry need not pay shareholders, whereas private companies rely on shareholders investing money but expecting a return from the overall profits of the company in which they have invested.
Critics of nationalisation say that it removes crucial benefits associated with the open market. Free marketeers beliee that competition between private companies allows for a diverse range of firms, which are then forced to compete with one another and find it to be in their interests to serve their customers well.
