By ThinkTank suggests inflation measures to Rishi Sunak
Rishi Sunak should consider raising benefits and pensions to keep up with inflation.
According to reports, research has suggested.
The chancellor faced increasing pressure to tackle the cost-of-living in this week’s spring budgetary statement.
“Increasing benefits by an extra five percentage points, by 8.1% rather than the 3.1% currently planned, would give four times as much help for low-to-middle income households for every pound spent as scrapping the planned national insurance rise”, the Resolution Foundation said.
The report by the living standards thinktank came as Sunak made final preparations for Wednesday’s statement.
One possible measure could be a cut to fuel duty, on Sunday, Sunak stressed that he understood the pressure of rising petrol and diesel costs.
It remains unclear what, if anything, he might do in terms of extra help for domestic energy bills.
Several Conservative MPs have called on Sunak to help people by scrapping the imminent 1.25 percentage point rise in national insurance contributions for employees and employers
Appearing before the chancellor on BBC’s Sunday Morning programme, consumer expert Martin Lewis predicted that 10 million UK people could soon experience fuel poverty.
Sunak disputed Lewis’s figure – “I don’t know if he presented any analysis to show that” – but was unwilling to comment further.
Sunak said people should “judge me by my actions over the past two years”, adding: “Where we have been able to make a difference, I have tried to do that.”
Sunak said: “We don’t know and I don’t want people to be scared. What we have is a price cap that will protect people through to the autumn. We’ve acted now to help them with the increase that is coming in, in April. The situation is very volatile in Ukraine.”
“Ukraine has come along and made things more difficult but it hasn’t changed the underlying situation that we’ve got this monumental backlog that we want to work through,” he said.
