Britain’s next nuclear power plant should be scrapped because it is wastefully expensive and out of date, according to the boss of Ovo Energy.

The industry should instead look to the future with ever-cheaper renewable energy, said Stephen Fitzpatrick, the founder and chief executive of the group that will soon be the UK's second-biggest supplier as Ovo acquires SSE’s consumer business.

“We should just call it a day. I thought at the time the deal was struck at £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh), inflation-linked, that it was a bad deal for customers. Unfortunately the technology, the design it is based on, is unproven,” he said.

“Looking at the cost for customers of renewables, solar, and wind, the cost just keeps coming down. The cost for nuclear keeps going up. It strikes me that this does not represent value for money for consumers, never more so than this week when the cost went up by £2.9bn.”

The Hinkley Point C reactor will cost up to £22.5bn to build as costs keep rising above initial plans.