Portrait of the week: Energy bills up, NHS waiting lists down and hosepipes off

Home

Energy bills will be £4,266 for a typical household by January, according to the consultancy Cornwall Insight, which had put the sum at £3,616 only a week earlier. Ofgem had decided since then to shorten the period over which suppliers can recover their costs. Gordon Brown, prime minister 2007-10, declared that Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, competitors to succeed him, must hold an emergency Budget to deal with the ‘financial timebomb’ of energy prices. ‘If they do not,’ he said, ‘parliament should be recalled to force them to do so.’ Liz Truss, in an interview with the Financial Times, said she would help people with the cost of living ‘in a Conservative way of lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts’. Sunak seized on the remark, saying: ‘It’s simply wrong to rule out further direct support at this time, as Liz Truss has done.’