Two recent surveys from the consumer group Which? and the British Retail Consortium have found the cost of household gas and electricity to be people's number one concern.

Frankly it is no wonder. Gas and electricity bills have doubled over the past six years while average wages, benefits and pensions have barely risen at all. So it is hardly surprising the temper of the working-class population boils over every time the energy companies announce further price rises.

This anger and the demand for action have forced all political parties to respond. Yet without exception each one of the parliamentary parties have offered inadequate solutions thus far.

Energy Minister Ed Davey offers little help beyond advising customers to switch their energy supplier. Some 90 per cent of customers choose to ignore his advice, feeling it makes little difference which energy firm you are with as each one increases its bills by the same amount and each favours those customers who can pay by direct debit.

They all charge their poorest customers the highest rates. Indeed those on "power cards" face the most expensive tariffs of all. Customers are therefore right to insist that it is the government's duty to act on fuel poverty rather than pass the buck to individual customers.

Labour leader Ed Miliband's intervention has been much heralded, yet he merely promises to cap gas and electricity bills in the dim and distant future and only if he wins the 2015 Westminster general election. What, you might ask, are working families supposed to do now as another cold winter approaches?

Not to be outdone on the "mock outrage" front David Cameron suggested scrapping the green levy component of energy bills despite the fact it makes up less than 9 per cent of the total and that doing so would undermine Britain's climate change targets and also negate efforts to develop renewable energy alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels.

North of the border Nicola Sturgeon entered the fray with her own version of "jam tomorrow," suggesting that an independent Scotland would cut energy bills by 5 per cent a year from 2016. This is a long way short of the SNP's 2007 Holyrood manifesto commitment to "eradicate fuel poverty in Scotland altogether by 2015."

As well as being wholly inadequate to deal with the present fuel poverty crisis all these proposals appear designed merely to give the illusion of action.

They provide very little meaningful relief to millions enduring fuel poverty today in one of the richest countries in the world.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) estimates that there are now eight million households in Britain suffering the humiliation of fuel poverty.

One million of them are in Scotland. Under the official definition a household is said to be in "fuel poverty" when spending more than 10 per cent of its entire income on heating and lighting. Consequently millions now go without the heating and the hot water they need on a daily basis.

The DECC commissioned Professor John Hills from the London School of Economics to examine the extent of "cold-related deaths" in Britain and he found that 27,000 people will die this winter as a result of continued exposure to fuel poverty. That figure is higher than the number killed on Britain's roads annually.

The lack of conviction among Britain's political class when it comes to addressing this issue is appalling, and my party has been campaigning alongside other organisations to eradicate fuel poverty.

It is clear we are witnessing a systematic failure of the free market to provide the most basic necessities of life. Millions of customers are now unable to buy the gas and electricity they need simply because the price is beyond their reach.

To add insult to injury the Con-Dem coalition cut the winter fuel allowance paid to pensioners in 2010, making a bad situation even worse.

Only by returning energy supply to public ownership can we ensure that every household gets the heating it needs.

There are six demands we should take action on immediately. We could reduce energy bills straight away, paying for this with a windfall tax on energy companies.

We could double the winter fuel allowance paid to pensioners and extend its reach to other vulnerable groups such as students, the low-paid and the unemployed.

We could increase investment in renewables to diversify away from costly, polluting fossil fuels. We could build 100,000 energy-efficient homes for the socially rented sector each year to replace the more inefficient and dilapidated houses.

We could establish a legal right to receive affordable power - as is inherent in the Warm Home and Energy Conservation Act 2000 - and, finally, we could bring the gas and electricity sector back into public ownership.

But how do we force multinational corporations and their political mouthpieces to take such action? Only by building a mass campaign to eliminate fuel poverty altogether.

Colin Fox is joint national spokesman for the Scottish Socialist Party, which releases its new pamphlet End Fuel Poverty and Power Company Profiteering this week. Buy it for £3.99 including P&P from SSP, 93 Hope Street, Glasgow G2 6LD.