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:
double quotation mark 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:
double quotation mark 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
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:
double quotation mark 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:
double quotation mark 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”.
double quotation mark [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:
double quotation mark 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:
double quotation mark 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.
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