Private energy companies should be forced to pass on savings from lower oil and gas prices to consumers, Labour leader Ed Miliband said yesterday.

The party will table a motion in Parliament this week calling for energy regulator Ofgem to be allowed to compel privateers to drop their prices in such circumstances.

But senior backbencher Michael Meacher called for the party to go further and take “at least one” energy company back into public ownership.

Mr Miliband’s announcement follows a drop in the price of crude oil over six months — from £75 a barrel to just £33.

Tory Chancellor George Osborne has promised a Treasury investigation into whether energy giants are passing this onto their customers.

Mr Miliband told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “We see wholesale costs go down 20 per cent in gas prices over the last year, and no reduction in bills.”

The vote on Wednesday will call on the government to fast-track legislation giving the energy regulator “the power to cut prices to bring immediate relief,” said Mr Miliband.

“Let’s reduce energy bills for consumers. We can do that as well as having this freeze to make sure energy bills don’t rise.”

Labour’s plan calls on the government to push through “fast-track legislation” before May’s general election.

He said Britain’s “zombie Parliament” should “do something which will actually make a difference” before the poll.

Mr Meacher told the Star that empowering Ofgem to slash bills would be “a good move.”

But he said the behaviour of private companies “buying and selling in large quantities” on the oil market gave energy giants “opportunities to obfuscate how prices are worked out, and to seek a way of increasing prices surreptitiously.”

Mr Meacher warned: “The opportunities to do that are still so great in the private market. I do wonder how far regulation can go.

“I would favour taking at least one energy company into public ownership, so that these machinations can be transparent, and so that private companies can’t get away with these tricks.”

In 2013 Mr Miliband promised that an incoming Labour government would freeze energy prices for 20 months, which many feared would simply cause bills to soar before the election.