The cross-party Trade and Industry Committee said domestic customers and most businesses were "extremely unlikely" to suffer cuts in gas or electricity supplies.

But it added: "It is very likely that the largest industrial and commercial customers will, if they have the relevant contracts, suffer interruptions, or, if they purchase gas on the spot market, have to pay very high prices for that gas, or both."

Prices hit record highs last month, becoming the world's most costly fuel on worries about a supply squeeze this winter which forecasters have predicted could be the coldest in a decade.

Official inflation data released on Monday showed the record surge in gas prices drove up factories' raw materials costs last month, pushing up input prices at a 12.5 percent annual rate.

The country faces its tightest gas supply in years as North Sea output has been falling for the last five years, making the country increasingly reliant on European imports.

The committee, which took evidence from ministers, companies, industry lobby groups and regulators, said problems would persist for the next two winters after this one.

It said rising fuel prices will mean more people "fall into fuel poverty" and demanded the government press for a single market within the European Union with greater urgency.

Britain has called for more reforms of the EU energy market to bring down prices and give new suppliers greater access to EU pipeline networks which are owned by large utilities.

"These are matters that do lie, at least partially, under the control of the UK government," the report said. "It is therefore right to expect government to take steps to mitigate the impact of problems this, and probably for the next two, winters."

The committee said it was far from clear that all energy users had benefited from early liberalisation of the British market.

"The operation of the liberalised UK market is heavily dependent, and becoming ever more so, on the unliberalised continental European one," it said.

The parliamentarians said the market was not big enough to interest financial institutions to trade on the forward market for gas.

"They are unlikely to become involved unless there is a Europe-wide forward wholesale gas market," it said.