Mr Hunt said: British Gas can retain their Charter Mark provided that they get

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Mr Hunt said: "British Gas can retain their Charter Mark provided that they get their performance back on track." The high-profile warning follows reports of soaring complaints about the company to the Gas Consumers Council. It is the latest in a series of public relations fiascos for British Gas since the end of last year when it emerged that the company had awarded its chief executive, Cedric Brown, a 75 per cent increase in basic pay.Yesterday British Gas admitted that calls from customers have doubled to 500,000 a week, causing the company to increase by about 800 the number of employees handling customer queries. Many of the calls concerned the decision to give 5 per cent discounts to customers paying by monthly direct debit. This was criticised by some consumer groups as discriminating against people who could not pay by direct debit but always paid on time.British Gas is restructuring in preparation for competition in the domestic gas market, starting next year, and this is widely viewed as the main reason for falling service standards.Ian Powe, director of the GCC, said: "Intervention by the Prime Minister's Citizen's Charter office, his custodian of public service standards, shows how unwise British Gas was to cut corners in customer care while so hurriedly preparing for the competitive market. We shall do all we can to help Briitsh Gas restore its reputation for excellent service."Mr Hunt said: "British Gas have assured me that their aim is to re-establish their reputation for excellence as quickly as possible and that their new structure will ultimately enable them to be more responsive to customers."The company has agreed with the minister to increase training for staff dealing with customers, empower staff to make amends where needed and set up more telephone lines to ensure that 90 per cent of all calls are answered in 30 seconds or less.More staff and weekend working will be used to clear up the backlog of telephone inquiries and correspondence.In spite of the Government's concern, Mike Alexander, managing director of British Gas Public Gas Supply, denied any fall in overall standards. He said: "There is no reason why British Gas should lose its Charter Mark. In 1994 we maintained the standards achieved in 1993 which, at the time, the Gas Consumer's Council said were excellent.".

The fuss about whether banks overcharge their small business customers has tended to take a back seat in recent months to the wider issue of "excessive" profits and executive pay. It may be about to erupt anew, however, thanks to the Bank of England's public request for more detail on the interest rates charged to small businesses. It has been more than a year since Eddie George said both sides were at fault in the small business/banking war - both unreasonable small businesses and insensitive big banks. He promised that the Bank of England would try to develop criteria for monitoring the relationship between banks and small firms more objectively. The aim of this latest initiative is not so much to expose charging practices to the cold light of day, though this might be a side-effect, as to find out more about how monetary policy is transmitted through the economy.

The commercial banks fear a rather broader purpose than the understanding of economic policy, however.They argue that further interest rate information - even averaged across all lenders and broad categories of borrowers - is too sensitive to publish. Unlike the mortgage market, where the rules for rates for different categories of borrower are clear and simple, there are wide variations in business loans, a practice justified by the need to allow for different degrees of risk. The charge on a small business loan can vary from 1 to 5 or more percentage points above base rate Transaction charges also vary hugely. It is easy to see how tables of interest charges would be used as another weapon to bludgeon the big, bad banks by the unfortunates paying above average.The banks should resign themselves to providing more information and educating the public about it, however. If the Bank of England wanted to publish commercially sensitive details about individual banks' charges, then it might be a different matter.