British Gas boss, energy execs, have only themselves to blame for Government's wrong headed price cap proposal

Iain Conn, CEO of British Gas owner Centrica, has launched a surprisingly pointed attack on the Government's plans. Trouble is, he doesn't seem to see his own role in bringing them about

Gas and electricity prices increasingly volatile as weaker sterling adds to bills (Getty)

The boss of British Gas owner Centrica, Iain Conn, has served it back up to Theresa May over her plans to cap what he can charge his long suffering domestic consumers.

Some people at the heart of the Tory Government, he told the BBC, “don’t believe in free markets”.

He said he found that “concerning at a time when this market is highly competitive and the UK is seeking to forge a new future relying upon free trade with the rest of the world”.

Mr Conn's clear implication is that the supposedly glorious free trading Brexit future, held up by the party’s ideologues, is being imperilled by the PM’s people with their pale imitation of former Labour leader Ed Miliband’s promise of an energy price freeze.

His critique was unusually pointed and nakedly political in the midst of an election campaign. It is striking, and quite rare for the leader of such a large business to intervene in the manner he has. Does he have a point?

As I wrote yesterday, the policy surely deserves to be criticised. It is a gimmicky proposal, tailored to the headlines, that is no substitute for a serious plan to mitigate Britain’s over reliance on wholesale energy markets that has driven the price rises recently imposed by (most) of the Big Six energy companies. It fires a sawn off shotgun at the existing market, when a more forensic approach would serve consumers much better.

However, while Mr Conn’s British Gas has been operating a price freeze of its own (it’s good until August), he and his colleagues have brought this upon themselves.

When Mr Conn argues that the Government has lost its faith in the free market, it implies that such a thing exists when it comes to energy. He did concede that the market is “not working perfectly” but you can file that under “classic British understatement”.

Mr Miliband came up with his freeze plan in response to popular discontent, a feeling among wide swathes of the public that they were being ridden roughshod over by a self interested oligopoly of the Big Six providers that treated their customers with thinly veiled contempt.

That feeling exists to this day, and sometimes the contempt isn't even veiled.

High prices, a bewildering array of complex tariffs, shabby service; the benefits of energy privatisation, if there even are any, are not being felt by consumers.

The energy companies, by contrast, have done very well out of it. Their executives, people like Mr Conn, who earns more than £4m a year, all the more so.

When you earn that much your gas bill is such an infinitesimally small proportion of your income that you probably wouldn’t notice a 50 per cent rise in prices, let alone the low double figures being imposed by his competitors that represent such a gut punch to the average Briton.

Nor would you expect someone like Mr Conn to ever have to battle with one of his representatives on the phone over a misread meter, a billing error, a switch gone wrong.

There is a disconnect there and even if the profit margins enjoyed by British Gas aren’t quite as stellar as people might believe, his arguments aren't going to be heard by consumers until such time as they see a dramatic improvement in the way the energy industry treats them, combined with an end to the nightmare stories that regularly find their way to people like me.

Mr Conn’s complaints might be heard by some of the free marketeers in the Tory party, but most of them have to listen to the voices of constituents too. It's therefore rather hard to see any MPs rushing to his side.

The behaviour and failings of the energy industry are what have prodded the politicians into misguided action. It rather typifies this industry’s approach that instead of responding constructively, Mr Conn has chosen to whinge. He needs to wise up.