Labour's flagship energy price freeze was in further chaos last night as Ed Miliband was forced to re-launch it as a drive to cut fuel costs. His pledge to freeze bills for 20 months was left in turmoil earlier this year by tumbling wholesale prices. Today, the Labour leader will announce that he would pass a law to force the regulator Ofgem to push prices down by up to £100 this winter. Scroll down for video . Ed Miliband has been forced to clarify his energy policy after tumbling wholesale prices demolished the concept of a price freeze, and now he says he will force suppliers to drop bills by £100 this winter . But critics pointed out that when he announced the price freeze, in a blaze of publicity in 2013, he called for Ofgem to be abolished. His officials are now drafting legislation to allow Ofgem to ‘put an immediate end to the overcharging by the Big Six energy firms’ which costs families and business around £2.5billion a year. Labour was forced to ‘rebrand’ the proposed freeze as a price cap when power companies started reducing household fuel bills earlier this year in response to falling wholesale costs. The party had to issue a ‘clarification’ that they would also allow household energy bills to fall and they would not be frozen at a higher level than necessary. Mr Miliband had been criticised for intervening in the market and the industry warned it would put investment in jeopardy. The Conservatives have pointed out that if energy prices had been frozen when Mr Miliband announced the policy, it would have meant families paying bills £100 higher than necessary today. If Miliband had frozen gas prices when he announced his policy back in 2013, households would now be paying £100 more than necessary after falling wholesale prices drove down bills . Opponents of Mr Miliband say this mistake reveals the danger of meddling in a free market, and warn that any further intervention could risk investment and jobs . Last night energy minister Matt Hancock said: ‘This is now the sixth version of a chaotic Labour energy policy that would have put up families’ bills by £100 and could do the same again – their record at setting prices has been a disaster. ‘And only Ed Miliband could propose giving a new power to a regulator he plans to scrap. This incompetence is exactly why Ed Miliband isn’t up to the job. Hardworking taxpayers would pay the price with higher bills.’ Mr Miliband will say today that in one of his first bills of the next Parliament, he would give Ofgem ‘a legal duty to review prices by the autumn – and the power to order price reductions in time for the winter’. He will accuse the Conservatives of failing to stand up to ‘vested interests’. ‘We live in a country where you can’t fulfil one of the foundations of family life – keeping your home warm – without being overcharged by one of the big energy firms’, he will say. ‘It’s been 18 months since I announced the next Labour government would freeze energy bills – so they can only go down and not up – until 2017 while we reset this broken market.’ Labour says prices are tumbling ‘not because of anything the Government or the Big Six energy firms have done, but because of global changes in oil and gas supply’. Labour is set to hand the key marginal seat of Halifax to Karie Murphy, who was at the centre of the Falkirk vote-rigging row. The party suspended her in 2013 over allegations the Unite union tried to manipulate the selection process in her favour. She was later cleared.
Miliband had promised to freeze gas and electricity bills back in 2013 . Falling prices mean freeze would have made households £100 worse off . Now says he will get Ofgem to force energy companies to drop prices . However opponents point out that he promised to scrap the regulator .