British Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said on Sunday that Liz Truss, the favorite to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister, will do “everything possible” to help families affected by the rising cost of living this winter.
The London Government is under pressure to announce what kind of relief measures it plans to apply to address this crisis, accentuated in recent days with strikes on the London Underground, the national rail network and shipping.
In an article written today for the Sunday Mail on Sunday, Kwarteng stressed that the Ministry of Economy “is analyzing options for the new prime minister”, although he did not detail what form the promised aid will take.
The head of Empresa is one of Truss’s main allies in the primaries to succeed Johnson, in which Rishi Sunak, former Minister of Economy, also participates, the position that, according to the media, Kwarteng wants to occupy in the next Executive.
Kwarteng indicated in the aforementioned media that he understands the “great anxiety” that the rise in prices is causing and accepted that “millions of families” are worried about their situation “to reach the end of the month.”
He insisted, without giving details, that “help is on the way”, while advancing that Truss will do “everything she can” if she wins the Conservative Party primaries, the result of which will be known on September 5.
With inflation skyrocketing in the United Kingdom above 10%, a strike by more than 45,000 railway workers left the country’s train network practically paralyzed this Thursday and Saturday, in protest to demand wage increases in line with the increase in the cost of life.
Public transport in London was also affected on Friday by a stoppage that left almost all the Metro lines and some buses in the British capital without service.
And this Sunday, almost 2,000 workers at the English port of Felixstowe, the largest maritime trading facility in the United Kingdom and which channels almost half of the country’s container traffic, began an eight-day strike to demand better wage conditions.
The Bank of England recently raised interest rates from 1.25% to 1.75% in order to control inflation and warned that it may reach 13% before the end of the year, while anticipating that the United Kingdom may enter a recession in the last quarter of 2022 and that this crisis may continue in 2023.
In this context, energy bills in this country may reach 6,000 pounds (7,071 euros) per year next April, compared to the average 1,971 pounds (2,322 euros) that each household now pays, according to a report from the consultancy Auxilione.