British Gas which made record profits of £969,000,000 in six months

British Gas who made record profits of £969,000,000 in six months

British Gas just reported record profits: £969,000,000 in 6 months, nearly 10x what it made last year.

Your sky-high bills are their obscene profits.

It’s time to bring energy into public ownership, running it to meet your needs, not their greed.British Gas’s profits rose to £969m after price cap rises allowed it to make more money from household bills.

Regulator Ofgem said the bumper results were a “one-off” due to the changes.

But campaigners said the profits were “a further sign of Britain’s broken energy system”.

“The profits posted will be greeted with disbelief by those struggling through the crisis,” said Simon Francis, coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, adding that “energy firms are operating on a playing field set by the government”.

British gas owner Centrica said it was important to understand that the changes were “simply a recovery of costs that we incurred in the past”.

Shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband said the profits showed ministers “failure to act on the windfalls of war being pocketed by the oil and gas companies”.

He also accused energy giants of “a transfer from families… people who are really struggling to pay their bills, to these big companies and their shareholders.”

The profits were announced just months after it emerged debt collectors were breaking into homes and forcibly installing pay-as-you-go meters on behalf of British Gas , even when the customers were known to be extremely vulnerable.

About half of British Gas’s profit – £500m – was due to changes to the price cap made by the energy regulator. By comparison, the business reported a profit of £98m in the same period last year.

Two other major energy suppliers also announced large increases in profits, helped by the changes to the price cap.

Scottish Power went from a large loss last year to profits of £576m in its retail division, while France’s EDF said its British operations – including nuclear and wind power generation – saw earnings jump to £1.95bn from £740m last year.

The boom was largely thanks to a change to the ‘price cap’ that allowed British Gas to claw back money from its millions of customers.

The figures were released as another energy giant Shell also announced profits of £3.9 billion over the last three months.

Poverty campaigners said the results were a sign of “Britain’s broken energy system”. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said this week that companies reporting strong profits must “tell us what they’re doing to keep the cost of living down for their customers”.

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: “These profits are a further sign of Britain’s broken energy system.

“At a time when household energy debt is spiralling to record levels and energy bills remain double what they were just a few years ago, the profits posted will be greeted with disbelief by those struggling through the crisis.