A question thrown up while MPs were arguing over gay marriage is whether fundamentalist Christian teachers should have a legal right to propagate creationism in the classroom. This cropped up while opponents of gay marriage were fighting a rearguard action to ensure that any religious group or individual with a religious objection to gay marriage was protected from anti-discrimination law.

The Department of Energy & Climate Change is expected to further backtrack on David Cameron’s promise to the House of Commons last year that new laws would be introduced “so that energy companies have to give the lowest tariff to their customers”.

Energy firms will be forced to switch all customers onto the cheapest tariffs, saving people from languishing on expensive, out-of-date deals, Ed Davey, the Secretary of State for Energy, announced today.

An energy company whose customers were hit with bill hikes of 9% last month reported a 38% jump in half-year profits to nearly £400 million today.

Britain’s big energy companies will be forced by law to place customers on the cheapest tariff suitable for their circumstances, David Cameron said today.

A drive to cut electricity bills for thousands of families from next year will be launched today by Labour at the start of its annual conference.

The energy watchdog has paid more than £1 million in bonuses to staff in the past two years.

Plans to install smart energy meters in every UK home could cost households even more, a consumer group warned the Government last night. A new report by Which? claims ministers are too hands-off about the £12bn project and are not properly in control of the costs. They warn that customers may not be protected from sharp price rises.

Daryl Hannah was arrested in DC this week at a rally against a proposed oil pipeline. Yet despite her history of campaigning for trees, air and fluffy animals, Hannah didn't always live up to her own high standards. While dating JFK Jr, she enjoyed heli-skiing: skiing on slopes accessible only by helicopter. The practice is banned in some countries due to complaints about its carbon footprint, noise pollution and disruption of wilderness areas. One practitioner tells me she accompanied the Kennedy party to the Canadian Rockies in the 1990s, even sharing a bathroom with Hannah and "her mountainous wash-kit". The actress, says my source, often returned to the lodge early as she was tired, forcing the chopper to make two fuel-guzzling round trips: "She was in Splash, so the guys would snigger about meeting the mermaid in the jacuzzi." Jacuzzis are deeply eco-unfriendly, though it's unclear whether Hannah joined the lads for a soak.

Papers make explicit the delight of government at the impending departure of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Ed Miliband won the first round of his battle to modernise Labour's traditional practices last night when the party's MPs voted overwhelmingly to allow him to choose his own Shadow Cabinet.