Ed Miliband’s recent announcement that should his party be elected in 2015 they would impose a three-year price freeze on energy was met with derision by the Conservative Party and with much hand-wringing by energy companies who saw their obscene profit margins being compromised, even making veiled threats of power cuts and blackouts.

The other day I was flicking through a national broadsheet when lo and behold I noted that three of the major players in energy supply had commissioned full-page advertisements offering three- and, in one case, four-year fixed-price deals to both existing and potential customers.

Now, could it be that Ed Milliband’s threat had focused their minds or was it that they were possibly recalling a windfall tax imposed on the banks by a previous Labour Party?

Are we perhaps at last seeing a shift in the “power” so long in the hands of energy companies?

Their long-suffering, captive customers would certainly welcome it.

Robin Tulley, Honey Croft, Hove