Liz Truss Faces Growing Pressure to Reveal Details of Energy Crisis Plan as Britons Mourn Queen

Last week, MPs were told that the cost of No 10’s bailout plan, which was announced by Prime Minister Liz Truss, would not be revealed until after a fiscal statement from Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng expected later this month.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss is under pressure from her own party to reveal details of the government’s plan to tackle the country’s energy crisis as soon as possible, the Guardian has reported.

According to the newspaper, Tory MPs call on Truss to set out more details of the government’s bailout “potentially on Thursday or Friday next week,” after the country emerges from national mourning over the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The monarch’s state funeral will take place at Westminster Abbey on September 19th.

The PM will reportedly travel to the UN General Assembly in New York next week before returning in time to attend a House of Commons gathering, where Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is due to deliver his fiscal event.

David Davis, a Conservative MP and former cabinet minister, told The Guardian that “broadly speaking, it was the right way to go” to hold the event next week.

“The truth is the public thinks about politics less than 10% of the time. But this is different because this is about their own frightening winter bills, and I mean frightening. That’s why it’s such a high-political-purchase issue, and you can’t leave it, because the point is to take people’s worries away. The economics and the politics point in the same direction,” he asserted.

Davis added that theoretically, it would be better to have independent cost assessments alongside the fiscal event for the energy package. He said that forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England have been so “erroneous” that it would be preferable to do without them. “I would rather see reform to the forecasting method rather than just get rid of them, though”, the MP said.

Former Cabinet Minister John Redwood, for his part, insisted in an interview with The Guardian that “after mourning a much loved Queen and the state funeral, parliament should meet.” He said that “the current plan for a long conference recess means a delayed return on October 17” and that the government needs “to tackle the cost of living crisis and energy shortage before then.”

Truss Slammed Over Her Energy Crisis Plan

Redwood spoke after Truss announced last Thursday that in line with her plan, which is purportedly worth £150 billion, energy bills would be capped at £2,500 per year from October 1. She added that the phased-in measure would last for two years to save a typical household around £1,000 a year and help cope with soaring living costs.

Opposition parties were quick to warn that the government's plan to ease the cost-of-living crisis without taxing energy companies would burden Britons with debt. Labour leader Keir Starmer argued that the freeze would force taxpayers to “foot the bill”.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, in turn insisted that “this phony freeze will still leave struggling families and pensioners facing impossible choices this winter as energy bills almost double”.

The same tone was struck by Torsten Bell, chief executive of the UK independent think tank Resolution Foundation, who told The Guardian that Truss announced “a simply colossal energy support package to prevent a living standards catastrophe this winter.”

Bell claimed that even though the support was “big” and “bold”, “families should still expect a tough winter ahead, with rich households getting twice as much cost-of-living support as poorer households next year.”

“The energy price guarantee was absolutely the right thing to do in terms of providing support where it’s needed. But, by ruling out any attempt to fund it through further windfall taxes, the welcome support today could have a nasty sting in terms of higher mortgage payments and higher taxes tomorrow,” he pointed out.

The remarks came after the UK energy regulator Ofgem revealed in late August that the energy price cap would rise 80% to £3,549 per year for an average household from October 1st. Analysts warned at the time that without urgent government intervention, the sum could skyrocket to as much as £6,000 in 2023.

The rising cost of living has already hit millions of UK households, prompting tens of thousands of rail and postal workers to go on strike. Last month’s study conducted by the University of York suggested that at least 45 million Brits may be in the grip of fuel poverty by January 2022 due to the looming energy price cap increase.

In late February, then-British Foreign Secretary Truss warned that the sanctions London – along with other Western countries - had slapped on Moscow in retaliation for Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine would worsen the UK cost of living crisis, and that Britain should be tackle an “economic hit”.