THE government has been urged to act on rising energy bills by introducing a windfall tax on oil and gas companies to help working families.

In an opposition day debate today, Labour told the Tories to choose between their government’s continued inaction in tackling the rising energy bills or to support Labour’s package to help families with rising bills.

Labour said its plans would help the average household to the tune of £200, while delivering targeted support for those who need it most and reducing their bills by up to £600.

MPs heard that energy bills were expected to significantly rise in April due to the government’s “failure to secure our domestic energy supply” and to deal with the cost of living crisis.

Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, told the Commons that oil and gas companies should cough up and that “it is right that those who have profited during the crisis pay their fair share.”

And he Tories’ “opposition to this measure tells you exactly whose side they are on, and it’s not the British people struggling with their energy bills,” he added. 

Labour called for VAT on home energy bills to be scrapped for a year and for an increase and expansion of the Warm Homes Discount to reach 9.3 million people.

In response, energy minister Lee Rowley dismissed Labour’s proposals as “incoherent and unclear” and said they failed to add up.

The debate came as the Office for National Statistics found today that the poorest 10 per cent of households spent 54 per cent of their average weekly spend towards essentials such as energy and food.

Labour MP Dan Carden told the Star that what was needed was “to take the whole energy supply industry into public ownership” with the job of government to fix the energy crisis, “not to prop a failing energy market.”

The Labour government in Wales announced today that it would double the winter fuel support scheme payment from £100 to £200.

Jane Hutt, the minister for social justice in Wales, said the additional £100 “will go some way to helping the most vulnerable in our society to pay their fuel bills.”

TUC Wales general secretary Shavanah Taj said the “Welsh government is right to recognise the huge impact of rocketing energy prices,” but that “only the UK government has the financial firepower to properly tackle the scale of the crisis.”