Campaigning to be the next Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak pledged up to £10bn to help with rising energy bills, which he said could help up to 16mln people.
Proposing a £200 benefit for every household in the country from abolishing VAT on energy, which would cost around £5bn, Sunak acknowledged that an increase in government borrowing would be needed to fund efforts to tackle the crisis.
The former Chancellor wrote the pledge in the Times, where he also proposed finding up to another £5bn to help those most vulnerable to rising prices.
Sunak, at a Tory party event in Cheltenham, also refused to rule out limited and one-off borrowing to get through the winter as the last resort, according to the Guardian.
Opposing Tory candidate, Liz Truss, suggested her own proposals in her Q&A session at the event, reiterating that the best way to tackle energy bills would be tax cuts.
She told Tory members that this would be her first port of call, before focusing on longer-term energy supply issues, such as fracking and nuclear power.
Truss also said she would provide other assistance but refused to go into details before she was even named as PM and without knowing the Chancellor’s budget.
Earlier in the week, bosses of oil and gas and energy companies, such as those at Shell, BP and Centrica, convened with the current government to come up with solutions on how to help with soaring energy bills.
However, those talks came to nothing, which likely means a windfall tax on the bumper profits made by the above companies won’t be introduced anytime soon.