ONCE upon a time, there was a Chancellor so disgusted by the gulf between rich and poor that he snatched £5.2bn from City “fat cats� to put young people back to work.

The windfall tax on the privatised utilities was wildly popular with a public angered by their huge profits and the New Deal programme it funded successfully slashed youth unemployment.

It is hard to believe – after so many years of Labour bending over backwards to appease the City of London – but that Chancellor was Gordon Brown.

Back in 1997, the privatisations of electricity, gas, water and telecoms were fresh in the memory – and their eye-watering profits were deemed unacceptable.

Fast forward 11 years and the profits made by the energy companies, who are busy hiking their bills by up to 17%, attract similar condemnation.

A fuel poverty watchdog says utility bills are more than 50% up on five years ago – a far bigger rise than has hit energy companies’ costs.

Worse, the poorest are hit hardest, because the million lower-income households on pre-payment meters pay £140 a year more for gas and electricity than those using direct debit.

Meanwhile, the scandal of pensioners and the poor shivering in their own homes creates legal – as well as moral – dilemmas for the Government.

Ministers bravely set themselves a legal duty to end fuel poverty by 2010. That is now less likely to happen than the Premiership trophy ending up at Anfield. Yet, as the task gets harder, the cash to insulate homes dries up. Grants under the “Warm Front� programme will be slashed by 25% between now and 2011.

With the Government almost broke, if only there was a plan to raise billions of pounds that could reverse this shocking rise in the numbers unable to pay their fuel bills. Well, there is. Last month, Alistair Buchanan, chief executive of the energy regulator Ofgem, met Chancellor Alistair Darling to discuss this very problem.

He proposed a windfall tax on the predicted £9bn profits of the electricity companies over the next five years – a suggestion that was said to have been received “coolly�.

How long ago 1997 seems.

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