Is it time to nationalise energy companies?

Energy firms that cannot lower bills should be temporarily brought into public ownership, former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has said, in a “stark challenge” to the government.

Writing for The Guardian, Brown has called for the energy price cap to be cancelled and for the government to negotiate new lower prices with energy companies. The former Labour prime minister compared the current cost-of-living crisis to 2008, when some banks were temporarily nationalised to protect consumers. 

Writing after annual bills were forecast to reach more than £4,200 by January, Brown said that the government should “pause any further increase in the cap” and then negotiate separate company agreements to keep prices down after examining profit margins and available social tariffs.

Any companies who could not agree to such a requirement should be brought into temporary public ownership, said Brown.

What did the papers say?

More than 100,000 people have already put their names to a petition calling for the nationalisation of the UK’s energy assets, suggesting it is an idea gaining credence with the public.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has also proposed a “pragmatic reshaping” of the UK’s energy market. It has called for it to be “more in line” with some European countries, which it says are “finding it easier” to weather the energy crisis. The union is urging the government to take the “Big Five” energy suppliers and other failing retailers into public ownership. It says the cost of doing so – under £2.5bn – is similar to what the government has already spent on bailing out insolvent energy company Bulb.

Both the collapse of Bulb and rising gas prices “begs the question” of nationalisation, said an anonymous former Bulb employee on the i news site. “Billions of pounds” have been funnelled back to private shareholders since the privatisation of the energy sector in the 1990s, and since then the price people pay for their energy has continued to increase “despite the argument that a privatised energy sector would be more efficient and therefore cheaper”. 

But the decisions made by the government last week to pay for Bulb’s continued operations via a special administrator “shows how straightforward nationalisation could be”. 

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/business/economy/957627/is-it-time-to-nationalise-energy-companies