Under a Labour government, families are being robbed through the issuing of higher and more frequent energy and water bills, the Nationalist Party said in a statement.

Signed by deputy leader David Agius, the statement refers to a court ruling which refused arguments made by ARMS Ltd in an ongoing court case.

ARMS itself had tried to remedy the situation after the number of complaints it was receiving, the PN said.

From the hundreds of bills the PN received from consumers, it resulted that 80 per cent were paying higher bills than they should, the statement said.

The PN said it is also concerned about the high bills when considering the price paid for gas by the government. An Auditor General report shows that Enemalta bought less electricity from the interconnector when the price was low, and more electricity when the price was high. If the situation had been reversed, Enemalta would have saved thousands of euros, the PN argued.

The PN insists that the situation should be remedied, and promised that a new Nationalist government would pay back what has been stolen.

In reply, the Energy Ministry said that the only changes to the system in the last years was the reduction of tariffs in 2014. The way the tariffs are calculated has not changed since the Nationalist Party in government had introduced the system in 2010.

The ministry said that ARMS was conducting an exercise to fix any anomalies, but nobody had stolen anything. The court decision was a preliminary one and did not go into the method used to calculate the bills.