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Energy minister Malcolm Wicks has denied that rising energy costs are the government's fault.
The comments came as a new poll showed that more than one third of people believe the government is mainly responsible for high fuel prices.
The ICM survey for BBC1's Panorama programme and the AA found that 38 per cent laid most of the blame for petrol prices at the government's feet.
And it suggested that 35 per cent are more likely to vote for a political party which promises to lower car and fuel taxes.
However, speaking to BBC Radio Four's Today programme, Wicks said that the government was not at fault for the rise in energy prices, and added that the government had "argued with some success for greater liberalisation" in Europe.
Wicks said: "We have said that 15 per cent of all of our energy by 2020 should come from renewables – a tenfold increase.
"If these are not big decisions by a government concerned with the future, I don’t know what is."
And Angela Eagle, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, added: "You have to get the balance right.
"If there's a sudden price spike in oil that is causing real hardship to businesses, families and individuals in the country, then we have a duty as a government to make sure that we can do something about that in the short-term, but we don't lose sight of our medium to long-term goals, which are to re-engineer the way our economy works in order to reduce our carbon footprint, and that is what we are doing."
But Edmund King, president of the AA, said: "Normally in politics when it comes to elections, health and education are right up there, rightly so, but you don't hear much about transport.
"But now motoring is becoming much more of an issue. If there are 32 million motorists out there, that's a substantial proportion of the electorate and they could make a real difference in an election."
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