So he is saying when he wins the next election,(no chance for him, probably a very good chance for labour) he is going to ensure the privately owned and run energy companies are not going to increase the prices of energy to us plebs.

and just how is that going to happen, perhaps make all bike shops not increase the price of inner tubes would be easier. and a lot cheaper.

and neither is going to work in reality, without huge subsidies to shareholders, most of whom are foreign

FREE BEER FOR EVERYONE!

I’m voting for baby!

Drug testing should be extended to politicians.

and just how is that going to happen

Simple, they pass a law to make it happen. Good old fashioned state enforced price controls, probably done through the regulator. I’m not saying I agree BTW, but the mechanism for doing it would be pretty straightforward I would think.

I suspect he will do it through the new regulator he plans to set up

which will have to get thru parliament so its not that likely it will, in which case he can just blame the torries for blocking it

besides which its just an election pledge*

*see clegg and university fees
also cameron and protecting the NHS

which will have to get thru parliament so its not that likely it will, in which case he can just blame the torries for blocking it

Except that he’ll have a majority, so it should be no problem?

Price controls of essential privatised services are hardly a new concept, I think they may already exist in law, but successive governments have been rather weak in applying them.

do ofgen not alread regulate prices to an extent and the rail regulator set maximum price rises for train fares

he also included some wriggle room saying that in exceptional circumstances (eg wholesale energy price upheaval) they could still raise them

Its a shot across the bows innit? I doubt it’d be legal to do it, even if it was do-able.

But what it does do is send a long, long overdue message to not just the energy companies, but also the other privatised utilities monopolies, who’ve gleefully been bending us all over for years, that the decades of doing whatever they bloody well feel like, with absolutely zero regulation, oversight or sanction may be coming to an end

Here’s hoping eh? It is refreshing for someone to finally challenge the neo-liberal consensus that ‘competition’ is a panacia to everything, as in reality it doesn’t actually exist in anything but name in our supposed capitalist utopia

The prices for rail fares (another privatised failed market) are regulated to this degree (and could be forced down under the current system if there was a will for it) the suggestion that it would be illegal or impossible for a government to do this seem misguided at best.

I thought any attempt to stop private monopolies charging whatever they like tended to fall foul of EU competition law

I thought any attempt to stop private monopolies charging whatever they like tended to fall foul of EU competition law

Water prices are regulated by OFWAT.

He has no chance of being elected in 2015. These pledges and policies are merely camouflage so that he can turn to the dissidents in his party fter the GE and say “see – I told you all this left-wing stuff would never work“. Labour and Torys will then go head-to-head to see who can win the most right-wing (i.e. the majority of the UK voting public) votes for the following GE.

one day binners, one day

these are just the sort of controls that shouldve been put in place when the utilities were being sold off

and it turns out Milliband has Balls! not just Ed but real testicular fortitude
he told murdoch to eff off (whatever he did the sun and times were never going to stop attacking him anyway) in a way no UK party leader has told that aussie arse to, ever!
he stood up to David Cameron (and Obama?) over Syria
hes even stood up to the unions and could change the face of labour and party funding forever
and now hes attacking the energy cartels

The policy is so well thought out that even Chukka Ummuna struggled with it on Newsnight last night.

But we still face serious economic and social headwinds in the UK and so far we have had two party conference (three if UKIP counts for anything!) and what serious proposals have we had? De nada….

The LibDems – err, we have done the job of avoiding/moderating Tory excesses. Please vote for us and we will govern with whoever.

Labour’s big moment and we get: price controls, shuffling business rates, land banks, bedroom tax (sic) and breakfast clubs. FFS, when will we get away from he politics of focus groups and talk about the real issues facing the UK. I pity the news and newspaper editors trying to make stories from yesterday. Paxman was positively bored. It is seriously depressing when that is the the best an opposition party can come up with.

So now we await the Tories. So who will be the conference wrecker (a la Cable, Bloom, McBride) and what focus group will they try to please? Here’s hoping for something a little more profound but probably likely waiting for Godot.

Must be a different Miliband

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/6431749/Ed-Miliband-to-accelerate-plans-for-new-nuclear-plants.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/nuclearpower/6526566/New-nuclear-power-stations-to-be-announced-by-Ed-Miliband.html

“We are going to have to see significant infrastructure built in the coming years. We have to understand people’s concerns and where they’re coming from but to say no to all of these things isn’t an option because it will be bad for Britain in terms of our security of supply and it’s bad in terms of low carbon as well.”

Give him some credit for trying! But if this is the flagship ‘left wing’ policy to camouflage the NuLab-Lite then I doubt if it will do him any good.

Scotroutes – interesting points about RW v LW and the positioning of the labour party. Milliband is setting out his target groups clearly in the middle to LW ground (although he avoided the 70s terminology of price controls!). And there is some strategic sense in that given the fact that the economy recovery is not being felt evenly in terms of wages, jobs etc. So all perfectly sensible politics there as in the public’s eyes Labour have lost the historic economic debate. But what is the middle ground? Not the ONS’s £24k income households. No, even the £60k earners are not “rich”. No wonder the low income earners feel disenfranchised when Reeves sets out the economic stall at these levels.

thm you know you are misquoting reeves- she said 2 earners on a combined income of 50-60 in the SE dont feel rich

IMO, that was deliberately left open to interpretation (for political reasons) but nevertheless as was stated on the other thread the message is clear in terms of where Labour are focused. The squeezed middle is the front line rather than traditional Labour voters.

Labour’s big moment and we get: price controls, shuffling business rates, land banks, bedroom tax (sic) and breakfast clubs. FFS, when will we get away from he politics of focus groups and talk about the real issues facing the UK.

I’m not usually one to defend the labour party or Ed Miliband, but what ‘real’ issues would you like them to talk about? Falling living standards for everyone other than the very top, blatantly unfair and punitive benefits changes, and the back-door privatisation of the last remaining public services seem pretty real to me. I for one actually think they’re on the right track with a lot of this, although as always they’ll probably water it down in the face of tory attacks and a rightwing media frenzy.

But Milliband was 100% correct in the point that he made repeatedly – Britain CAN do better than this – surely, hopefully?!? 😉

The UK has amongst the lowest per unit domestic retail energy costs in Western Europe (of the main countries, only France is lower, because they invested heavily in nuclear). The UK has more competition in its energy supply market than most, leading to efficient supply chains and low margins.

Look at the figures yourself: http://www.energy.eu

The cartels lie outside of our control in Russia and OPEC.

Lets also remember that the government takes far more in tax and VAT from domestic energy supplies than the power companies make in profit!

FFS, when will we get away from he politics of focus groups and talk about the real issues facing the UK.

THM – to be fair, Business rates is a very serious issue*. Businesses – shops, pubs, etc are paying rates calculated on the pre-crash incomes of 2007.

How many shops, bars and cafes (metropolitan Utopia of London excepted) are turning over anything like the income needed to pay rates that were calculated at the height of the boom. Its a major reason loads of shops, pubs etc have gone to the wall in recent years. And will continue to do so at a rate of knots until something changes!

* Not to the real ‘Wealth Creators’ in The City, obviously. But meanwhile, back in the real world….

The UK has amongst the lowest per unit domestic retail energy costs in Western Europe (of the main countries, only France is lower, because they invested heavily in nuclear). The UK has more competition in its energy supply market than most, leading to efficient supply chains and low margins.

UK prices are low because UK energy tax is low. It’s nothing to do with the efficiency of the market.

ninfan is that not because the UK generates more of its own energy and gets more from renewables than the rest of europe?

Its complete bluster, unenforceable, will never happen and is a waste of the publics time considering it. Shamefully the same bull**** that seems to keep erupting from Labours mouths at the moment.

Similar crap was spouted by Ed Balls earlier in the week about HS2, playing to the knee-jerk crowd with absolutly 0% commitment about what they will do.

get off the fence LHS 😉

Similar crap was spouted by Ed Balls earlier in the week about HS2, playing to the knee-jerk crowd with absolutly 0% commitment about what they will do.

Funny how people have such short memories. I seem to remember a couple of years before the last election the main criticism of Cameron and the tories by the Labour party was that they didn’t have any policies. Now it’s exactly the same but the roles are reversed. It’s pretty ridiculous.

🙂

Aye fix prices for two years – that’ll work just fine! Energy companies will just whack up rates a month before the freeze and straight away afterwards.

The only sensible thing he said on ‘Breakfast’ this morning was to stop big companies sitting on land and doing nothing with it. Basic proposal was ‘develop it or face compulsory purchase’.

But this should also applies to Councils. Our local town has loads of council owned land that is doing sod-all. All we keep getting are proposals of future development, but nothing happens!

The guy is a joke, he should be providing incentives for the power companies to build a power and supply system fit for purpose and one that is not reliant on ancient old power stations,. But no instead he wants to reduce their ability to do so.

Why not take money from say the supermarkets instead, where there is even less competition.

You seriously think the energy companies are more competitive than supermarkets? 😯

They’re all cartels! To varying degrees. The privatised utilities are all essentially operated as extremely profitable monopolies, who when it comes to actually investing in anything, other than dividends for shareholders, or executive bonuses, comes cap-in-hand to the government looking for taxpayer subsidies

Which is exactly why someone needs to point it out and do something about it

Binners – I agree that business rates are a challenge and an issue. Are they in the top 5 pressing issues facing the UK? Debatable. What irritates me (as an economist!) is that yesterday was merely a (weak?) exercise in poltical positioning. * Labour are re-positioning themselves around a “cost-of-living” strategy rather than “the Tories are destroying the economy” argument previously. Politically that makes some sense albeit it is risky given the shallowness of what has been proposed so far. But in terms of making the UK recovery more secure, I think the sugar rush of focus group politics quickly wears off.

Balls to his credit was at least more honest and realistic.

* edit to be fair, that is one of the purposes of a party conference and in that sense, Millband has made a reasonable fist of setting out Labour’s political stall.

But what is the middle ground?

problem is each party has its core vote who wont jump ship to the other side and this draws watch party towards some sort of hegemony where they fight for the middle ground and the floating voter

I blame the lack of PR and democracy tbh.

See also Camerons issue with trying to do this whilst keeping the loons and closet racists voting for him rather than UKIP.

It is quite easily enforceable and I dont see what is wrong with Balls going we will evaluate the HS 2 but we aint writing a blank cheque.

Seems reasonable – its not like i have to commit to an extension of my house in 4 years time with no knowledge of what it will cost or whether I need it.

You seriously think the energy companies are more competitive than supermarkets?

It’s on Daily Politics at the moment.

Some Labour politician telling Andrew Neil that power companies make ‘huge profits’, but he doesn’t know how much. Andrew Neil pointed out the company that he’d been quoting as the worst offender makes a lower ROI than Tescos.

Andrew then suggested a freeze on food prices. This was apparently ridiculous.

Right.

thm – I don’t think any of the political parties have the balls to address the real issues facing us all. ie: the present capitalist system is a busted flush, doomed to forever repeat the boom/bust process, but with increasing bust, after far far less boom. There’s none of them would dare to suggest that the whole countries economy needs to be fundamentally restructured. Because then they’d have to suggest how that was going to happen

We’ll not hear anything about that next week either. Though at least the labour party don’t seem in such a rush to inflate another housing/credit bubble, then call it an economic recovery

A genuine question for Labour members – before the speech yesterday, would you have imagined that the single most important initiative that your party would propose would be a two year price control on energy? Was that top of anyone’s list?

JY – I agree on Balls and HS2 (but I also have a vested interest there!!!!)

You seriously think the energy companies are more competitive than supermarkets?

What is an acceptable profit to make on retail energy? IIRC SSE, one of the big six make about 5%, a lot smaller than the profits made by Tesco on food. Clothes are also essential, should the price of pants and socks be set by the government?