THE effect of the rising cost of living, fuel, food price and consequential inflationary increases with the promise of another recession next year require both attention and action by all our politicians.

With the current Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer being on holiday or missing to avoid action, the Labour Party are calling on the Tory leadership candidates to agree an emergency budget to tackle the spiralling cost of living.

Some 4.2m households, about 11.6m people, will spend a quarter of their net income on energy by January. The £1,200 extra instalment support given to 8m households plus the £400 winter fuel payment will be insufficient to meet increasing needs.

Average energy bills will reach £3,600 before the winter. For millions of people, it is going to be an absolute catastrophe with October being the second time energy prices literally hit millions of homes at the same time inflation rises to 13 per cent.

This is an emergency situation that deserves emergency measures. The Labour Party will back a key government intervention to curb the crisis.

It is already supporting the removal of VAT on energy bills. It has proposed scrapping the Tory tax break for oil and gas producers whose eye-watering profits just increase shareholder’s dividends as severe basic energy prices leap ahead.

The combination of all these predictable crisis elements requires whoever is leading the government now and their successors to act with decisiveness before the winter ensures the millions of already poverty-stricken people are driven further into choices between heating or eating, are consumed by the cold or die from hunger.

It is not good enough for the PM to abdicate responsibility or accountability, leaving an immediate national plan of action to combat the crisis to others. Action is needed now.

Peter and Maggie Rees

Winchester Labour and Co-Op Constituency Party,

Monarch Way,

Winchester