Ministers are pushing for lighter taxes, childcare requirements and MOT rules among other tactics to help people with soaring food and fuel costs.

After the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, ruled out raising borrowing or taxes before his Autumn statement, Boris Johnson asked the cabinet to come up with measures that won’t unbalance the Treasury’s finances.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is said to have suggested easing MOT requirements to that tests are needed only every other year, rather than annually, for cars over three years old.

This would save car owners at most £27.43 per year.

Others at the meeting reportedly argued the saving could be outweighed by higher refuelling costs if cars become less efficient as a result.

The AA also warned that the move could raise repair bills, make roads more dangerous and put mechanics’ jobs at risk.

Ministers are also thought to have discussed raising the maximum number of children a single childminder is allowed to look after, to reduce childcare costs for families.

Responding to the suggestion, the National Day Nurseries Association told inews: ‘We risk puting additional pressure on an overworked workforce while undermining efforts to give children the best start in life.’

Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, wants to encourage overnment departemnts to share data on people to maximise the chances of individuals getting all the benefits and support they are eligible for.

She is said to have written to telecoms bosses asking them to reach out to an estimated 5 million phone and broadband subscribers who may be missing out on reductions of between £10 and £25 a month which they are eligible for due to receiving universal credit.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is said to have called for a major investment plan targeting energy, transport, infrastructure and housing.

He told colleagues ‘the rising cost of housing is a serious issue for the party of homeowners and we’ve got to be doing everything we can to encourage more house building’, according to cabinet sources cited by The Times.

Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the government efficiencies minister, insisted that cutting taxes would be the best strategy.

Mr Rees-Mogg joined calls from Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to relax planning rules so that more people have a chance of getting onto the housing ladder.

He also reportedly suggested the government could relax its commitments to net-zero carbon emissions, although the idea was slapped down by the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng.

Mr Kwarteng tweeted that ‘nuclear and renewables are cheaper than burning gas’ and that ‘the more cheap, clean power we generate at home, the less exposed we’ll be to expensive gas prices’.

Inflation reached a 30-year high in March, prompting estimates that Brits face the fastest fall in living standards since 1956 in the coming months.

The latest figures do not take into account a rise in energy price caps two weeks ago that will see around 22 million households suffer energy bill increases of around 54% on average.

Some households are beginning to receive £150 rebates on their council tax bills as part of the Treasury’s £9bn package to ‘take the sting’ out of the crisis.

The Treasury will also offer households a one-off discount of £200 on energy bills this October which would need to be paid back gradually over the following five years.

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