THE Government is working on plans to provide additional helps to housholds struggling to pay their energy bills, the Work and Pensions Secretary has revealed.
There Coffey told GB News: “It’s important that we have more money in the pockets of people’s pockets. That’s why she wants to have an emergency budget to remove things like the National Insurance increase that is hitting many working families, but also about things like removing temporarily the energy levies which is about £150-£160 pounds on the cost of energy bills right now.
Commenting on measures Lizz Truss is proposing she added: “And indeed, as she (Liz) has said consistently, she wants to look at the options on how to help households and it’s important that we will do that.
“If we do that in a considered way, people in government are working up options and those decisions and options will be put forward to the future Prime Minister.”
Asked about the profits made by the big energy firms Ms Coffey said: “Well, I think I think every household likes to have more money than they spend.
“At the end of the day, what do you do? You have more money coming in than you spend out and every household has that kitchen table budget themselves, and that’s understandably why people are concerned about some of these energy price increases, which are not necessarily within their control and deeds.
“That’s part of the challenge that we continue to face and it’s why the government has taken action and is preparing options for a new Prime Minister to do but overall, we need to get the economy growing.
“We need to be putting more money into people’s pockets, allowing them to keep more of their own money so by removing the National Insurance increases by not putting up Corporation Tax, we unlock that opportunity.”
Ms Coffey added: “There are lots of regulations out there and indeed we could be acting more quickly, more rigorously, to allow long term investment in our infrastructure in order to support things like the changes in energy supply that we need, instead of being overly reliant on gas which is triggered by world prices, which then triggers aspects of the electricity prices paid.
“There’s a combination there of making sure we have that long term infrastructure but we’re not going to do that if we just keep raising taxes, just keep spending more in instead allow our corporations to really to get on, to grow and that will feed through as well into not only reducing taxes for people in working households, but also making sure that we continue to get people’s opportunities unlocked with higher paid jobs.
“And those are all parts of, you know, the focus that we need to take rather than resign ourselves to managing decline. That’s not Liz’s approach.
“She wants to see the growth, you want to see reduction in taxes, and that is certainly the sound conservative principles, recognising the challenges of the day, and that’s why options are being considered to build on potentially the support package that we have, but also other levers can be drawn to get more money into the pockets of people straight away through an emergency budget.”
