Energy: Expert says ‘people need direct payments’

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Giles Wilkes urged the Government to take some immediate measures in support of the most hit and not wait until the effective election of the new Prime Minister. He suggested “direct payments” is what “poor people” need the most at the moment. Referring to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s suggestion to have Boris Jonson and leadership candidates Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss cooperating to find immediate measures to tackle the current cost of living crisis, he dismissed the proposal as he stressed “it’s pretty unrealistic to expect those two candidates and the outgoing Prime Minister to get together and put aside their differences and agree all the measures”.

Mr Wilkes told BBC Radio 4 Today: “What they need to do is immediately get on with changing the benefit system just like they did on the Covid.

“People need direct payments, probably anything else is too fiddly and difficult like messing around with bills.

“It’s too difficult to change the actual energy prices in a rush, and what they need to do is give money to poor people, which makes it more affordable and hits the people who actually need it.

“They need get on with actually changing the benefit share very like Rishi Sunak did doing the Covid crisis where quite quickly money was going out to people who desperately needed it.

“We need an emergency budget and Gordon Brown’s is absolutely right for all reason he’s given that the poor are going to have an absolutely terrible time this winter and we need several months to get all the means right.”

He continued: “I do think that it’s pretty unrealistic to expect those two candidates and the outgoing Prime Minister to get together and somehow put aside their differences and agree on all the measures for the month of August.

“So what needs to happen is that the civil service needs to be working full out so that one day one of the new Prime Minister’s tenure, they’ve got the measures reactor them to agree.

“I can’t see the three politicians agreeing at all what needs to be done”.

BBC Radio 4 Today Nick Robinson asked: “Do you think the energy price cap is fit for purpose these days?

Mr Wilkes responded: “When we devised it, it was meant to go after a very different problem which was the people who were good at shopping around and checking what the bill was, people listened to Martin Lewis and they got a reasonably good price.

“The people who didn’t look at their bills regularly were being ached several £100 a year more, and that several £100 a year made a big difference to them.

“What it’s now doing is meaning that prices don’t rise immediately when you get a global surge in energy prices and so it has given governments time to stop and work out what to do about the crash that’s coming in people’s income.

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“I think it’s kind of working in that, I’m really glad we have one, if we hadn’t had one the bills would have gone up to £4000 a year for a typical household”.

The comments came as a report commissioned by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown showed that some families are expected to be up to £1600 a year worse off amid the current cost of living crisis.

In the wake of the report outcome, poverty expert Professor Donald Hirsh, who wrote the report, warned that the measures put in place by the government to tackle the current crisis fall far short of what households on low-income need.

He urged the government to take urgent action and, speaking a Sky News he stressed that “exceptional measures” are now needed which could include an “emergency increase in Universal Credit”.

In light of the report, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged Boris Johnson and the current leadership candidates Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to meet and agree on an emergency budget this week.

He said: “We are facing a humanitarian crisis that Britain hasn’t seen in decades”.

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