MILLIONS of Brits woke to the shuddering news that inflation had hit record levels yesterday – confirming in cold hard numbers that times are ferociously tough, and people’s cash is going nowhere near as far as it used to.

While overall inflation hit a 41-year high of 11.1 per cent on the back of rocketing food and energy prices, the cost of housing and rent rose even more steeply.

In October it was a brutal 11.7 per cent, the highest in 70 years.
And that’s not the worst of it.

With little sign that inflation is easing, there are growing fears that families will have to get used to rising prices for much longer.

In turn, the Bank of England will have to raise interest rates even more to bring it back down again.

Which will mean increased borrowing costs, more expensive mortgage payments and less disposable income at a time when everyday essentials become increasingly unaffordable for many.

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Misery upon misery, in other words.

The least well-off families are, as ever, hit hardest — with the inflation rate at 16.7 per cent for those on the lowest incomes.

Hard-up families are already managing their household finances carefully, buying cheaper, own-brand food.

So, unlike middle-class households who can trade down from Waitrose to Tesco or from big brands to basic ranges, it’s much harder for them to tighten their belts.

Official figures also show the steepest price increases have been on the essentials — rent, food and energy.

But it wasn’t bad news for everybody yesterday — far from it, in fact.

At the same time the inflation bombshell was dropping, news broke that energy giant SSE had enjoyed a TREBLING in its half-year profits.

The reason? The huge leap in energy prices which, of course, is one of the main drivers of inflation for the rest of us.

Far from being embarrassed by doing so well on the backs of the public’s pain, SSE also announced it would be handing around £300MILLION in dividends to shareholders.

The timing is staggering — and if there was any wavering in Westminster about windfall taxes, SSE’s bumper profits will have surely hardened Jeremy Hunt’s resolve.

The Chancellor is widely expected to raise windfall taxes on energy companies from 25 to 35 per cent in today’s Budget, and extend it by two years until 2028.

In addition, Hunt is also said to want to go after electricity generation companies who are now profiting from power prices being much higher than their contracts.

THE RIGHT SOLUTION

In the circumstances, a windfall tax is the right solution.

After all, SSE’s jump in profits has not been driven by any new genius on its part.

Energy prices have rocketed on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its weaponising of gas supplies to Europe.

Therefore, it can be argued that SSE, like its energy peers, has been rewarding shareholders for Putin’s bloodshed in Ukraine.

Without it, dividends would have been far less generous — if they’d been paid at all.

They aren’t alone, of course.

In the last few months Shell, BP and Centrica have also enjoyed record profits.

Shell said it would give another $4billion (£3.4billion) to shareholders after quarterly profits more than doubled.

Centrica, meanwhile, said it would give investors £250million — TEN TIMES as much as the support it was giving households.

At the time, the profits of BP were described as “obscene”.

FairFuelUK’s Howard Cox said the vast windfall was built on global energy insecurity and the “ruthless exploitation” of drivers at the pumps.

He even revealed the shocking case of a cancer patient who could not afford to attend their weekly chemotherapy treatments, choosing to go fortnightly instead.

PUBLICLY LASHED

Centrica and Shell, meanwhile, were publicly lashed for delivering “an insult to millions of working people struggling to get by because of soaring energy bills”.

Chastened? Not at all.

Indeed, bosses at SSE banged the drum yesterday that the Scottish firm invests four times as much as it makes in profit.

And there were explicit warnings that those investments in greener energy could be in doubt if the Treasury grabs some cash.

However, £4.5million SSE chief Alistair Phillips-Davies told The Sun that of the £12billion investment that has been promised until 2026, around three quarters has been committed, making it hard to unwind that.

He might say that SSE would have to “think hard” about where it spends its money if there is a windfall tax but it’s an empty threat.

SSE is also still incentivised to invest in new energy projects because it gets money off its spending via a “super deduction” which reduces its tax bill.

So while it might have to hand money back in a windfall tax on obscene profits, it’s still getting cash back in its pocket.

Phillips-Davies says that it would be a “shame if oil and gas companies get better deals than renewable companies building a future for the country”.

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A shame?

The real crying shame is that while the energy companies slap themselves on the back over their vast profits, British households and the public finances are being hammered by the very same soaring energy prices that are filling SSE’s coffers.

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