A petition calling on the government to nationalise a UK energy company has gathered thousands of signatures. The petition is calling for the Government put Bulb into public hands rather than allowing it to be sold.
Last year Bulb collapsed into administration. But rather than allow the company to fail, the government stepped in and set aside £1.7billion to allow the company to continue to operate while administrators worked to restructure or sell off the business.
The unusual deal, which effectively sees the Government prop up the business, was carried out because officials deemed Bulb's administration was too big to be handled in the usual way. Bulb is the UK's seventh biggest energy supplier and has more than 1.6 million customers.
Octopus Energy is currently in talks to buy Bulb. However, it is understood that Octopus has previously asked the government for £1bn in taxpayer funding to take over Bulb.
The handling of Bulb's collapse has led to a petition calling on the government to cancel the deal and instead take over Bulb itself. It would create the country's first nationalise energy company.
The petition has been launched by We Own In, an organisation which believes that the privatisation of public services has failed. It is calling for a number of public services to be renationalised. We Own It argues that by taking control of an energy company, the UK would be able to dampen the rising costs of energy for UK households.
In its petition, the organisation said: "The government is planning to spend £2.2bn bailing out private energy company Bulb (which collapsed last year). Now they want to pay Octopus a further £1bn to take it over.
"This makes no sense. Now is the perfect time to set up a publicly owned company like EDF in France which has kept their bill rises to only 4%.
"We call on the UK government to keep Bulb in public ownership and use this new publicly owned company to cut our energy bills."
The petition, which can be found online, has attracted nearly 17,500 signatures at the time of writing. It is aiming to reach 25,000 signatures.
We Own It added: "Other countries like France, Germany, Italy and the US all have public suppliers of energy. The government could take Bulb’s 1.7 million customers as the basis of a new publicly owned energy supply company."
