The public will rightly be angry with Centrica over this latest round of price hikes.
For those 900,000 Scottish households already in fuel poverty this announcement will come as a cruel shock and drive even more to the brink.
That this increase appears to fall disproportionately heavily on those in the north of Scotland is all the more galling given that most of the gas used in this part of the country comes onshore just near Peterhead.
However, while fat-cat energy giants must shoulder a share of the blame, we mustn’t overlook the role of the UK’s system of green energy subsidies in these increases.
Cooked up by Ed Miliband when he was energy secretary under Gordon Brown and paid for by levies on our fuel bills, subsidies to ‘green’ energy generators will top £22 billion by 2020.
This money will have been spent mostly on industrial wind turbines but could have been used more wisely to build three state-of-the-art, third generation nuclear reactors, including full waste disposal and decommissioning costs, which would have churned out energy at 90% efficiency 24/7 for the next 90 years.
It is painfully apparent that Scotland and the UK need to embrace a more balanced approach to our energy generation, including nuclear and shale. Government policies are stacking the deck against Scottish energy consumers when we should be doing all we can to relieve the burden of high fuel prices.
* Struan Stevenson is a Scottish Conservative Euro MP.
