The German utility company said it booked a quarterly net profit of £1.2 billion. This was down from £1.48billion in the year-earlier period. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes were £1.8 billion compared with £1.28 billion the previous year, while sales for the quarter rose to £19.72 billion from £12.37 billion.

It comes at a time when households are struggling to cope with soaring energy bills. 

Pressure is growing on the Government to slash VAT on gas and electricity bills. Labour MP Bridget Phillipson said the energy crisis is “deeply, deeply worrying” and that a Labour government “wouldn’t have let things get to this point in the first place”.

She said: “We’ve known that this has been coming and we think we should cut VAT on gas and electricity bills to deliver immediate support to families and pensioners.”

Energy sector bosses are set to take part in crisis talks with Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng as the price cap was forecast to hit more than £4,200 in January.

In a new dire outlook for households, Cornwall Insight said bills are set to soar to around £3,582 in October, from £1,971 on Tuesday, before rising even further in the new year.

There has been widespread anger at Shell, BP and British Gas owner Centrica announcing bumper financial result.

The Government has already promised £400 to every household and extra help for the more vulnerable.

READ MORE: Martin Lewis savages ‘zombie government’ as energy prices spiral

“That is a cataclysmic rise for households; millions of households will simply not be able to afford it.

“When we get to January, a typical bill will be £4,266 a year, many pensioner households pay more than that because they have the heating on more for understandable reasons.

“That is 45 percent of the full new state pension and a bigger proportion of the old state pension. We’re not talking mortgages.

“We’re not talking rent. We’re talking energy bills. This is absolutely catastrophic.

“And for a Government to sit there like zombies saying ‘We can’t do anything’, when you run an organisation, which I have done and many other people have done, when you know there is a crisis of magnificent proportions coming, you do not say ‘We’ll wait until we’ve got the change in our leadership’ – you start dealing with it now.”

He called on the two Tory leadership candidates to set out how they will tackle the energy crisis to alleviate the “mental health damage” facing millions in the UK.

He added: “What we’re facing here is a financial emergency that risks lives. I accept the point that Boris Johnson is running a zombie Government and can’t do much, but the two candidates – one of them will be our prime minister – they need to get together in the national interest to tell us the bare minimum of what they will do.

“If they can’t agree, and what we need to hear now, because the mental health damage for millions of people who are panicked about this is manifest, is we need to hear accurate plans.

“We have some relative detail from Rishi Sunak saying he will look at the handouts he gave in May and increase them, but, unless he’s doubling them, and he needs to double them, it is not in proportion to what he did back in May.”

Speaking about Liz Truss’s plans, he added: “I cannot believe the only proposal will be tax cuts, because many of the poorest, many state pensioners, many on Universal Credit, don’t pay tax so it will not help them and they simply cannot afford this £2,000-a-year or more year-on-year rise.

“And getting rid of the green levy, which is a sticking plaster on a gaping wound… The green levy is typically around £150 off bills, we’re talking about a rise of thousands of pounds on bills.”