The government will struggle to find a quick fix for the cost-ofliving crunch ahead of key deadlines, including March’s spring statement from the chancellor. Energy bills are set to rise sharply in the spring, with a planned price-cap change potentially increasing prices by as much as 50 per cent, according to economists.
The new cap will be set on 7 February and will come into force in April. It will potentially take the energy bill for an average household to around £1,900, but the story does not end there: analysts predict it will rise further this year, to over £2,200 in the autumn.
So great are the expected increases that it is no longer a conversation about whether the government should intervene to mitigate the pressure on households, but by what means it should do so. Spending or borrowing some money is therefore “inevitable” for the Treasury, if it wants to ease a “living standards shock” for Britain’s poorest this April, economists at the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) warned in an analysis shared with The Independent.
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