Scottish Power and npower are already facing fines of £200,000 each after unfairly stopping thousands of customers switching to new suppliers. The fines are in line with a similar measure against British Gas earlier this year when they were fined £200,000 for locking customers into direct debits. 

Earlier this year, an undercover reporter for The Sunday Times claimed to have found npower salesmen making customers sign forms without telling them they were contracts, lying about standing charges and taking advantage of people who spoke little English.Several potential customers were falsely told they would save money by switching to the firm, the newspaper said.

Now Npower, the country’s fourth largest energy supplier, has been fined £1.8 million after its salesmen were found to have deceived customers and missold gas and electricity contracts.  It is the third largest fine Ofgem, the industry regulator, has ever imposed.  Undercover reporters discovered that doorstep agents in the London area were deceiving customers by pretending to be from the ‘electric board’ to ‘check the meter’.

They then persuaded them to switch their contract to npower.  In some cases the contract they switched to left them worse off than they were before. 

Ofgem said it understood that it was impossible to weed out every rogue salesman in energy companies, but managers should have spotted such a grave problem.  The regulator warned that the fine would have been far higher if npower had not taken swift action the moment the scam was uncovered – the entire London team was suspended, with seven people ultimately losing their jobs.

The Liberal Democrats have today published figures that show an increase of 9% in the number of children living in temporary accommodation this Christmas.

The information which was released in a Parliamentary answer to the Liberal Democrats shows:

• Almost 88,000 children are living in temporary housing this year
• There has been a 9% increase in the number of children living in temporary housing since 2004/2005
• London has seen a massive 38% rise over the same period

 Liberal Democrat Shadow Housing Minister, Sarah Teather said: “It is a tragedy that so many families will spend this Christmas mired in uncertainty and crammed into bed and breakfasts and unsuitable housing.

“Labour came to power promising to build more social housing, but unless Gordon Brown acts quickly his legacy will be one of failure and neglect of some of the poorest children.

“With more and more families finding themselves facing the grim prospect of repossession, the Government must urgently give councils the power to borrow and build now, while land is cheap.

“Poor housing affects a child’s health, education and life chances. Failure to rebuild the social housing safety-net is condemning thousands of children to years of insecurity.”

Government ministers made an embarrassing change of plan last night over proposals that would see “loan shark” interest rates on crisis loans for the poor.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell had approved the proposals to charge interest rates of up to 27 per cent on loans from the Government’s Social Fund for households needing a crisis loan, but the plans were hastily withdrawn following an outcry from MPs.

Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said:

 “It’s completely self-defeating. It’s just driving people who are already in difficulty into even further difficulty.”

A consultation document signed by Mr Purnell suggested credit unions be allowed to charge interest of one to two per cent each month in order to extend the cash services available, and went on to admit that rate would be equivalent to an annual interest rate of up to 26.8 per cent, enough to add almost £50 to a typical £433 loan.

Labour backbencher Ronnie Campbell commented: “James Purnell makes me ashamed to be a member of the Labour Party. It is a disgrace the way he is hitting the poor.”

Supt David Hilditch and council chief executive Tony Hunter have come together to offer a festive message to the residents. 

Both of them started work in North East Lincolnshire this year and want to continue the upward turn for the area.

Chief Supt Hilditch said:

 ”We know the area has some challenges, but there are lots of good things going on and we want to continue work in 2009 to make things better.

“Burglary of homes has been a priority area for us all year, but I am pleased to say that we have had some great successes in the last couple of months.

“Since October 1, we have charged a total of 88 burglary offences and, at the same time, the number of burglaries taking place has fallen dramatically.

“Christmas is a time when people need to be extra careful to make sure their Christmas presents don’t become someone else’s Christmas presents.

“If people take basic precautions, such as making sure they don’t leave things underneath the Christmas tree or in their cars, this will help prevent opportunist crimes from happening.

“Last month saw the lowest level of violent offences on record in the last five years and these things have come about through working together.

“This is not just within the Safer Communities partnership, but throughout the whole community, which plays its part.”

Mr Hunter said:

“I would like to say a big thank you to people in the community who contribute so much, whether they are part of a Neighbourhood Watch group, or run a local football team for kids.

“It is people pulling together within communities which really makes a difference – although they all have their own issues and their own problems, they have their own things to contribute, too.

“2008 has been a great year for children and young people in North East Lincolnshire, who are happier and safer, and we want to build on that for 2009.

“I think the main issue for the area is confidence and aspiration. There are lots of people out there who can – with the belief and the support – do, and achieve, so much.

“And with support, we are going to make this area what it can be.”

Mr Hillditch and Mr Hunter both want to offer their season’s greetings.

Mr Hilditch added:

 ”It is Christmas time and we want everyone in North East Lincolnshire to have a happy and safe Christmas and – especially at this time with the world economy being as it is – a prosperous new year.”

According to the latest figures, Judges and magistrates are jailing young offenders at more than three times the rate recommended by experts.Of  3,740 under-18s deprived of their liberty in 2006/07, youth offending specialists recommended custodial sentences in only 1,077 cases – 29 per cent of the total.

Liberal Democrats said that the official figures, which were obtained from the Ministry of Justice in parliamentary questions, suggested that judges and magistrates have little confidence in the non-custodial punishments which are available to them, such as community service .

Figures compiled by the Youth Justice Board showed a wide variation in the courts’ response to the reports’ recommendations across England and Wales between April 2006 and March 2007.

In some areas, custodial sentences were handed down only when recommended by the report, but in many others, the courts ignored recommendations that individual offenders should not be put behind bars.

“These figures blow a jumbo-sized hole in the government’s case that custody for children is used as a last resort in this country,” said Andrew Neilson, assistant director of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: “It is deeply alarming that so many children are being locked up when youth experts think they shouldn’t be, especially when we know there is a 92 per cent re-offending rate after a young man’s first prison sentence.

“We are schooling too many children in crime at the public’s expense.

“Britain incarcerates far more children than any other European country and it is not working – youth crime and re-offending are not falling.

“I don’t blame judges, who are operating in an environment where both Labour and the Tories are obsessed with looking tough on crime.

“Political posturing and the punitive demands of sections of the media are forcing us into treating many young people far too harshly.

“We need to move away from headline-grabbing rhetoric towards measures that will actually succeed in cutting youth crime, starting with effective community punishments that pay back damage to local communities and victims.”

More than 21,000 offenders already serving non-custodial sentences committed further crimes last year, which casts serious doubt over Labour’s pledge to make the punishments a tough alternative to jail.

Official figures show that a record number of criminals given community orders are being removed from the programmes because they have been convicted of new offences or because they have broken the rules.

The orders, which were introduced in 2006, can use a range of options for punishment including unpaid work. In the first full year following their introduction, 33 per cent of the 168,000 criminals put on the programmes had their orders terminated early for negative reasons – a total of 55,968, which included 21,051 who had committed new crimes.

Similar programmes in 2005 only had 28 per cent of orders terminated early for negative reasons, a total of 37,881. In 1997, the year Labour came to power, the figure was 19 per cent, or 25,085.

The ffigures will reduce the reputation of non-custodial punishments and also be bad news to ministers who insist that these penalties are a sensible alternative to prison.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, and Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary recently launched a scheme which will make offenders carrying out unpaid work to wear orange bibs.

Ministry of Justice figures released earlier this year revealed that criminals who are supposed to be under the supervision of the probation service have been accused of committing 1,104 serious crimes in the last two years, including 121 murders and 103 rapes.

These figures state that the proportion of community orders which are completed has dropped, from more than 70% when Labour came to power to less than half.

David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, said: “A third of community sentences are being terminated early and all ministers can come up with are cheap gimmicks like fluorescent tabards for offenders.

“Endless reorganisations and budget cuts have left the probation service severely overstretched. As a result, many community sentences start later and staff find it increasingly difficult to keep up.

“Only by improving and properly funding non-custodial sentences can we ensure that more are completed and halt the explosion in the prison population.

“The higher breach among suspended sentence orders shows that the threat of prison is not working.”

The Ministry of Justice claimed the more recent figures could not be properly compared with the data from before the community sentences were reformed.

Earlier this year a report by the National Audit Office, the spending watchdog, found that thousands of offenders who fail to turn up for community punishments are avoiding being returned to court if they claim to have overslept or produce their own sick note.

Probation officers were also allowing offenders to give “unacceptable excuses” such as having no transport or forgetting to attend appointments, which conflicts with a statement from the Ministry of Justice which states that If an offender breaches the terms of their order they face being taken back to court to receive a further order or a prison sentence.  The department says that:

“Enforcement and public protection will always be priority and probation officers will have no hesitation in breaching offenders who do not comply with their order.” .

Mr Cable said on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show that the government proposals for increased charge on emergency state loans were “totally unacceptable”.

The government says in future some loans could be run by credit unions, who would typically charge annual rates ranging from 12.68% to 26.8%.

“The social fund is an aspect of social security in emergency times, there is a proposal from the government that very high interest rates should be charged on this. This government has revived the social fund but now seems to be destroying its purpose.

“It’s completely self defeating. It’s just driving people who are already in difficulty into even further difficulty.

“It’s harsh, it’s insensitive and it doesn’t reflect the needs of the day.”

He also commented that the actions of the high street before Christmas had shown: “The sound of desperation, this thing about keeping the shops open 24/7 is tough on the staff and shows how they are desperate.”

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s husband has been revealed today in the Mail Online to be the author of a series of letters to her local paper defending the Government.

Richard Timney has had letters published in the Redditch Advertiser in Worcestershire that attack the Tories over schools and back Ms Smith’s controversial and widely unpopular identity-cards plan.

Mr Timney forgets to mention that his wife Jacqui Smith, is the MP for the Redditch, a former Schools Minister, and that she was responsible for both policies, and  he also forgets to mention that he is paid £40,000 a year to act as her Commons adviser.

Mr Timney’s latest letter, which was published on December 8, criticises the Conservatives over ID cards.

“If the Tories were serious about protecting Britain’s borders, they would be supporting ID cards – not standing on street stalls campaigning against them,” he writes. 

Gordon Brown and his Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell were last night accused of behaving ‘like loan sharks’ over plans to slap astonishingly high interest rates on crisis loans to the poor. Low income households dependent on emergency state loans could be hit with an interest rate of 26.8% under plans the new being considered by Government ministers.  The new rate has been proposed as part of a package of reforms of the social fund, which helps people on benefits with their budgeting crises.  More than one million individual loans were given to hard-up people last year, many of them awarded to disabled people who were struggling to find the funds to repair a broken boiler or cope with some other serious domestic emergency. The cost of the loans from the social fund last year was over £600million.

The Government is now consulting on measures to contract out the lending facility of the fund, and to charge 2% a month interest, or 26.8% APRwhich is about the same as the rate found on High Street store cards, and way above normal credit-card rates. This would add nearly £50 to the cost of an average £433 loan and saddle the borrowers, who are almost all on State benefits, with an extra four weeks of repayments. 

 Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokeswoman Jenny Willott said the proposal is “totally unacceptable”.  

“What the government is proposing would have people in dire financial circumstances facing an annual APR which is more than twice the current rate of a sub-prime mortgage,” she said.  

“Providing advice and information about savings and money management is all well and good, but when people are so desperate that they need a crisis loan, it’s just not the right time.”   

John Varley, the boss of Barclays Bank, forecasts that consumers and businesses will struggle to access credit for between one and two more years, and tin his opinion the credit crunch will last for up to two more years.

He added that he thinks thatbanks should apologise to customers to regain their trust.

Mr Varley told BBC1′s Panorama that the banking industry was facing a “public relations crisis” and would not regain the trust of the public until it had apologised for what went wrong.

He told the programme: “If you look at the industry as a whole, if I speak as a member of the industry rather than as chief executive of Barclays, I absolutely have to say we should share our portion of responsibility.”

He said that a reduction in the overall quantity of debt in the economy was imperative, and he added that he did not expect banks to start to increase their lending again before 2010.

Mr Varley said “As soon as asset prices stabilise, then we will see the financial economy recover. And when will that occur? That will occur some time over the course of the next 18 months”