IF – as we are often told – the public is sick of politicians’ refusal to be honest with them, then rising energy bills are a shining example of that failure.

This week, the Prime Minister staged a high-profile summit with the big energy firms, following above average price hikes over the past year, vowing to “help people get their bills down”. We were promised better information about cheaper tariffs available and urged to take advantage of “free offers” to better insulate our homes, thus saving money.

The summit came just weeks after Labour vowed to ease the misery of rising bills by breaking up the energy market, to end the dominance of the so-called Big Six companies.

These giants would no longer be allowed to produce gas and electricity and then sell it on to themselves. Instead, the energy would go into a central “pool” – and be sold on at only a slightly higher price.

Labour said recent increases had piled an extra £173m on North-East energy bills – probably the biggest current pressure on falling living standards.

But, this week, David Cameron claimed to be doing something similar already, pointing to proposals under which the energy firms would be forced to sell more of their electricity on the open market.

Now, I’m all for getting tough with the Big Six, who appear to be making outrageous profits – up from £15 per household to £125 since June, according to the industry watchdog – but this all looks like an attempt to run down an up escalator.

Even as the Downing Street summit was staged, a leaked European Commission report warned that homes and businesses, all over Europe, face at least 20 years of rising electricity prices.

They would rise “strongly up to 2030” under all scenarios, the document said, and more than double in the decades to follow, if more nuclear power and carbon capture and storage were rejected.

That’s the reality of global supply and demand.

In addition, someone has to pay for replacing Britain’s creaking energy infrastructure, and that someone is certain to include families, through higher bills.

I suspect the truth is that we will all pay much more for our energy in years to come, regardless of a Downing Street summit that bore an uncanny resemblance to a Tony Blair eye-catching initiative.

That’s enough to make us all grumble but is enough to make the millions of people who live in fuel poverty very scared indeed.

Yesterday, we were warned that 2,700 people die every year because they are too poor to heat their homes, more than are killed on the roads. Rising energy bills will mean more deaths, without decisive action on poorlyheated housing – a reason for a summit, if ever there was one.

DAVID CAMERON described lobbying as “the next big scandal” and, lo and behold, the Liam Fox affair broke. Nick Clegg warned that harsh spending cuts would trigger “Greek-style unrest” - and August’s riots followed. Just re-read the pair’s old speeches and know tomorrow’s news today.

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