CAMPAIGNERS braved the cold yesterday to protest against increased energy prices.

Around 20 protesters made their views heard outside the British Gas headquarters in Cowley yesterday morning.

They said that the firm’s 10 per cent price increases, announced earlier this month, are “crippling”, on top of an eight per cent increase in 2012 and a 16 per cent increase in 2011.

Protester Andy Jones, a spokesman for Fuel Poverty Action Oxford, said: “Millions of us are having to choose between feeding our children and feeding our gas and electricity meters, which force the poor to pay more for energy and cut off our heating when we can’t pay.

“Meanwhile energy companies like British Gas spread the lie that ‘green taxes’ are to blame for hiking their prices when the real problem is the privatisation of our energy and the sky-rocketing cost of dirty fossil fuels.

“A combination of publicly owned and community controlled renewable energy – alongside home energy improvements – is the way to bring bills down.”

Protester Ellie Smith, 28, added: “It was a very cold morning, which was apt for what we were trying to say.

“There are people in Oxford who are choosing between heating and eating. It is a crisis which is not getting better.”