And with the new Chancellor we had an early energy price promise, scrapping VAT on electricity for six months. So here are some early takes:-

This will have to be a permanent move, so good news for our call for the spark gap to be narrowed but it does mean finding the cash to pay for pledge. An estimated £800m a year, so not an insignificant amount for the Treasury but here is the counter narrative.

Some will point out that the energy price cap was due to increase in October, so the impact of the £45 will be reduced. Coming soon will be ED3, when the power networks want to ‘fill their boots’, sorry I meant to say ‘invest in delivering low carbon power to our homes’. I suspect anything left of that £45 will be gone by then.

But it did get me thinking more broadly about the cost-of-living crisis and how this VAT cut helps. It would be churlish not to acknowledge that lower tax rate of energy bills is a good thing for consumers and for some, struggling with their bills, it will look like someone is actually listening to their concerns. I suspect that is precisely why the cut has been done. But in the context of household finances, where do energy bills sit?

If you ask the public, they put energy bills front and centre of their concerns. Yet, whisper it quietly, are they really the problem in stretched household finances? The price cap currently is £1862 a year/£155 a month/£36/week. The average food bill for a family of four is between £5500 and £6000, over three times the amount. What regulations apply to supermarkets on how much they charge for food and drink? Insurance for your car, buildings and contents on average come to about £1500 a year; Sky packages with sport over £1000; the average driver travels about 7000 miles a year, costing approximately £1500.

I mention these not to make light of the VAT cut on electricity but to put it into some context about the challenge faced by the government in helping households.