Rachel Reeves signals that support package for household energy bills won’t kick in until autumn – UK politics live
Rachel Reeves signals that support package for household energy bills won’t kick in until autumn
Good morning. Keir Starmer is giving a press conference this morning where, according to No 10, he will discuss the Iran war, and how the government is supporting people at home. Now we are in April, the new financial year is starting, and the government is highlighting measures it has introduced that will help people with the cost of living. The Conservatives have an alternative list, and they are claiming this morning that “Keir Starmer and his chancellor have piled on extra costs leaving families almost £1,000 worse off this year”.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been doing her own media too. She is on the Jeremy Vine show later, but she has already given an interview to BBC Breakfast in which she gave a marginally clearer idea of what she is planning to do to help people with energy bills than she did when she made a statement to MPs last week.
We knew that she has already ruled out a universal support package, and that she wants to target help towards poorer families. Now she has signalled that she will not intervene until the autumn, when the central heating starts to go back on.
She told the BBC:
From July to September, gas usage, especially by families and pensioners, is the lowest of any months of the year because it is the summer months …
It will be really from the autumn onwards that people’s gas usage starts increasing. So at the moment we are working on a range of contingencies. And we are looking at more targeted measures. We are looking at ways we can support people based on their household income.
Referring to the universal support package introduced by the last Conservative government after the invastion of Ukraine, she said:
I want to learn the lessons of the past because when Russia invaded Ukraine, the richest, the best-off third of households got more than a third of the support. That makes no sense at all.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Keir Starmer holds a press conference in Downing Street.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is in Solihull to announce the Conservatives’ plan for a “national pothole patrol”.
10am: Reform UK is holding a press conference in Glasgow.
Lunchtime: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is interviewed by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2.
Afternoon: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is visiting south-west Hertfordshire.
Afternoon: Reeves is chairing a roundtable meeting with supermarket bosses.
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Key events
Iran war could drive UK food inflation to 9% this year, Food and Drink Federation warns
Food inflation could soar higher than 9% by the end of 2026 as war in the Middle East risks pushing up the cost of living for British households, a trade body has predicted. The Press Association reports:
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which represents 12,000 food and drink manufacturers, hiked its inflation forecast for the year in light of the conflict.
Economists for the trade body are now predicting that food inflation will reach at least 9% by the end of the year, up from the 3.2% that it had forecast in September last year.
The shift has been caused by the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz and disruption and damage to energy infrastructure in the Middle East.
The FDF said the situation is fast-changing, but its revision to the inflation forecast is based on the assumption that the strait of Hormuz opens to cargo traffic within the next two to three weeks and the majority of key facilities, such as oil, gas and fertiliser sites, return to normal within a year.
Oil prices have been falling, and the stock market rising, after Donald Trump signalled the Iran war would end within two to three weeks, Graeme Wearden reports. He has more on his business live blog.
Kyle defends government’s decision to go ahead with king’s state visit to US
In his interview Peter Kyle also defended the government’s decision to go ahead with the state visit to the US in April. (Although notionally the king is accepting an invitation from the president, the king acts on the advice of the government and ultimately it was Keir Starmer who took the final decision about the visit going ahead.)
Asked if he was worried about Trump insulting the PM in the presence of the king, Kyle told Sky News:
I think it is really important that the king, at this is very challenging time when it comes to rhetoric, is there showing that our two peoples have such affection for each other, despite all of the challenges in the relationship.
It is still a relationship where the deals that we signed have always endured.
Kyle also suggested that Trump’s insults should not always be taken at face value. Referring to the president’s increasingly aggressive comments about the UK and other Nato allies that have not fully supported his war in Iran, Kyle said:
We have a very unconventional president, he uses the bully pulpit on social media very effectively. He dominates a lot of debate. Let’s just see what actually happens …
He uses rhetoric to destabilise; he uses rhetoric in order to keep people on their toes. We are very much in touch with the American administration.
Business secretary plays down concerns about petrol shortages, saying people should ‘right now carry on as normal’
Peter Kyle, the business secretary, has been doing an interview round this morning. He suggested that there was no need for people to worry now about fuel shortages related to the Iran war.
Speaking about petrol, he told Sky News:
The AA and the RAC have said that there are no challenges with supply at the moment, so they are encouraging people to continue as normal, and we as the government are backing up what they are saying and reassuring people that, right now, [they should] carry on as normal.
If that changes, we will be upfront and honest with the public.
Asked about jet fuel, he said that “right now there are no constraints”.
He went on:
Of course, if the strait of Hormuz [is] closed into the long term, there may well be supply constraints.
We are already looking at those scenarios, a whole range of different scenarios, and we are acting to make sure that we can have resilience in a different set of circumstances in the long term.
But it’s really key to reassure people that right now there are no constraints.
Kyle was also asked about the warning from NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey that the health service could run out of some medical supplies. Jamie Grierson and Denis Campbell have that story here.
Kyle said Mackey was worried about “live medicines, one very specific medicine type in the NHS”.
[Mackey] has raised that concern, and we will look at that concern. But he is not talking about all medicine and all parts of the NHS.
Rachel Reeves signals that support package for household energy bills won’t kick in until autumn
Good morning. Keir Starmer is giving a press conference this morning where, according to No 10, he will discuss the Iran war, and how the government is supporting people at home. Now we are in April, the new financial year is starting, and the government is highlighting measures it has introduced that will help people with the cost of living. The Conservatives have an alternative list, and they are claiming this morning that “Keir Starmer and his chancellor have piled on extra costs leaving families almost £1,000 worse off this year”.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been doing her own media too. She is on the Jeremy Vine show later, but she has already given an interview to BBC Breakfast in which she gave a marginally clearer idea of what she is planning to do to help people with energy bills than she did when she made a statement to MPs last week.
We knew that she has already ruled out a universal support package, and that she wants to target help towards poorer families. Now she has signalled that she will not intervene until the autumn, when the central heating starts to go back on.
She told the BBC:
From July to September, gas usage, especially by families and pensioners, is the lowest of any months of the year because it is the summer months …
It will be really from the autumn onwards that people’s gas usage starts increasing. So at the moment we are working on a range of contingencies. And we are looking at more targeted measures. We are looking at ways we can support people based on their household income.
Referring to the universal support package introduced by the last Conservative government after the invastion of Ukraine, she said:
I want to learn the lessons of the past because when Russia invaded Ukraine, the richest, the best-off third of households got more than a third of the support. That makes no sense at all.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Keir Starmer holds a press conference in Downing Street.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is in Solihull to announce the Conservatives’ plan for a “national pothole patrol”.
10am: Reform UK is holding a press conference in Glasgow.
Lunchtime: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is interviewed by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2.
Afternoon: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is visiting south-west Hertfordshire.
Afternoon: Reeves is chairing a roundtable meeting with supermarket bosses.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.