So on the day that I received a letter from my energy company saying that I am protected by the price cap which is now increasing by 54% , so they will be putting up the prices by, …. 54%. Oh , I can move suppliers if I want to do so , but I wouldn’t bother if I was you was the implication in the letter.
So what was Rishi going to do in his Spring Statement to help out the most vulnerable in society? Well money for the household support fund. Right , so you really are going to have to be up against it and I don’t suppose it will be easy to get the money.
So what went wrong ? Where were the advisors? The fact that Income Tax will be reduced in two years time reinforces my guess that we are looking at a two year problem. Hopefully the war will not get any worse and with continued investment in renewables things should have settled down by then in time for the election ( opps did I really say that?). So we have a short term problem which is a massive problem for individuals but not so much for a government , after all , it is their job to sort out things like this. A two year subsidy to the energy users , which could be recovered by the improvement in the economy.
Ok so there are bits of help , but it is not enough , strong political management was required on that one.
So what else ? A five percentage decrease in fuel duty , which amazingly is less than the increase in VAT raised on the increasing cost of fuel , obvs he didn’t realise that everybody would spot that little detail.
Employment allowance and VAT incentives for energy saving and the rest is long term so it is not going to get around the heat or eat problem.
Bit of a crafty one on the NIC , a long overdue increase in the nil rate bands which will make a difference to all but the wealthy.
So Rishi might think that it is all over , but a lot more will need to be done to sort out the heat or eat problem. Such a shame when a really simple option of government subsidies for a couple of years would have sorted out a lot of the problems.