Tory leadership: Truss and Sunak face pressure to set out bill help

Tory leadership rivals Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are being urged to outline exactly what cost-of-living help they would offer to households should they become prime minister.

Labour have accused the candidates of having "almost nothing to say" about the huge spike in energy costs.

Typical household energy bills are set to hit £3,549 a year from October.

Ms Truss and Mr Sunak have both pledged to offer direct help but have not been explicit about the details.

Writing in the Daily Mail on Friday, Ms Truss promised to take "decisive action on entering No 10 to provide immediate support" to households this winter.

But the foreign secretary, who polls suggest will replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 6 September, insisted it was not right to announce her plan "before I have even won the leadership contest".

In contrast, Mr Sunak has previously said he would set out how he would act to ease rising living costs "as soon as we know how much bills will go up by".

However, at a Tory leadership event on Thursday, Mr Sunak suggested he could not give more detail until he was "in office", indicating no further announcements would be forthcoming.

On Friday, the UK's energy regulator Ofgem said the cap on domestic energy prices would rise to £3,549 pounds a year from the start of October, increasing pressure on household budgets.

Speaking to the BBC, Labour's shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves accused ministers and the Tory leadership candidates of being nowhere to be seen on the morning of the price cap announcement.

She said Mr Sunak and Ms Truss have been setting out their policies on nearly everything "apart from the biggest issue facing our country right now".

"People deserve a government that can meet the scale of this national emergency - not this spectacle of a Tory leadership race or a prime minister that put his out of office on months ago," she said.

She said Labour had a fully funded plan to freeze the price cap, funded in part by a windfall tax on the extraordinary profits of oil and gas firms.

Ofgem's chief executive Jonathan Brearley said the rising price of energy - largely driven by a spike in gas prices linked to the war in Ukraine - would be "devastating for many families".

He said that the new prime minister - who will take office on 6 September after the Conservative Party elects a new leader - will "need to act urgently and decisively to address this".

"We are working with ministers, consumer groups and industry on a set of options for the incoming prime minister that will require urgent action," Mr Brearley said.

"The response will need to match the scale of the crisis we have before us."

In a statement, chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who is widely expected to be replaced by the next PM, acknowledged that the price cap increase would be causing "stress and anxiety" for many.

Mr Zahawi said he was "working flat out to develop options for further support".

In May, when Mr Sunak was chancellor, the government set out a support package to help households, funded in part by a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.

This included a universal energy bills discount worth £400 and one-off payment of £650 to households in receipt of benefits.

The prime minister is expected to speak to the media about the price cap, though he believes any extra support has to come from his successor, Ms Truss or Mr Sunak.

Downing Street has said Mr Johnson has no plans to introduce big tax and spending measures to ease the cost-of-living crisis before he leaves office.

In her article in the Daily Mail, Ms Truss said she was looking at assistance "across the board" despite in the past insisting she was focused on slashing taxes, rather than what she termed "giving out handouts".

"To those of you feeling the squeeze, my message is clear: I will ensure support is on its way and we get through these tough times," she wrote.

But she repeated her pledges to cut taxes, including by reversing April's National Insurance hike, and slash green levies on energy bills.

Stimulating economic growth, she wrote, was "the best tonic to deal with the cost of living and make sure we are solving these issues at source".

During the leadership campaign Mr Sunak has repeatedly argued her tax cuts - worth an estimated tens of billions - would stoke inflation and saddle the UK with debt.

At Thursday's leadership event, Mr Sunak said he would also look at further support for businesses hit with soaring energy costs.

Asked what help he would give them, the former chancellor said: "That's clearly something that the new prime minister will have to look at. I'll have to look at it and I'm happy to do so and would do so."

In a previous statement, Mr Sunak said he wanted to keep "any one-off borrowing to an absolute minimum" and would "first seek efficiency savings across Whitehall to provide direct support for families to help with the unprecedented situation we face".