There have been questionable rumours of collusion floating around the utilities industry following January’s price hikes from npower, EDF Energy and British Gas. Several consumer groups responded to the increases by calling for a Competition Commission investigation. Paul Schofield, Head of Utilities at moneysupermarket.com takes a look...

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Paul,

At last the various Watchdogs are waking up to the abuse of market position of these energy utilities.What amazes me is what have they been doing over these last five years when prices were being increased beyond precedent? Contrast these increases with the Regulatory regime which existed not so far back when 12 energy companies were held to price controls of RPI minus x %, where x was an efficiency factor targetted on cost reductions.Why should input costs have changed so dramatically in such a short space of time.

Maybe there has been some increase but to this extent? No,the industry far from increasing competition has gone into greater consolidation and effectively ended up in foreign ownership.With only six major players and the threat of a further takeover,it is no wonder the market has eneded up as a cosy club.Not only that but most of these outfits are vertically integrated so that their input costs are also their output costs.

Why can't the Watchdogs get the bottom of this very quickly with financial analysis, which I am absolutely certain will show, what we all know is that we are being ripped off.What are they being paid to do?