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The business secretary has urged energy suppliers to stop forcibly switching households struggling with energy bills to prepayment meters, after calls for government action amid a surge in cases.Grant Shapps has written to companies saying he wants them to voluntarily end the practice of moving households on to more expensive prepaid energy tariffs against their will and promising to “name and shame” the worst offenders.Energy firms should instead make greater efforts to help those struggling to pay their bills, such as offering credit or debt advice, Shapps told them, suggesting...

It is built on a vast 230-acre site, with a total cost put at more than £100m, and has space for 1,700 heavy goods vehicles. Security staff are on patrol at several checkpoints around its 12-foot-high perimeter fence. Inside are new state-of-the-art buildings and equipment for inspecting imports from Europe.But more than six months after completion, this heavily guarded supposed showpiece of a newly independent Britain lies all but deserted. It is labelled by people who live nearby as the great white elephant of Brexit, spanking new but largely redundant....