Liz Truss is “considering” a freeze on at least some Brits’ energy bills to stop catastrophic rises this winter, it emerged today.
Allies said the Tory leadership favourite is looking at support on the scale of the Covid furlough scheme - which cost £70billion.
No final decisions have been made - and insiders say they will not be until after she is confirmed as Prime Minister, with an announcement at 12.30pm today.
She has also warned not all her decisions “will be popular” - and boasted it is “fair” to plough on with tax cuts that help the rich 235 times more than the poor.
But with Ms Truss promising an announcement this week, industry and political sources told two newspapers her team have looked at a freeze on at least some people’s bills.
An energy firm source told the Telegraph the idea has been "extremely actively explored" by Truss campaign figures. With reports it could affect millions of customers, a Team Truss insider added: “I'm confident there will be a mechanism introduced that freezes bills."
Another source told The Times: “The plan is to introduce some kind of artificial price cap for consumers combined with a mechanism for reimbursing suppliers. Plans are reasonably well advanced and involve not just civil servants but also ministers lined up for jobs by Truss.”
Scottish Power has previously proposed a two-year freeze on bills, funded by £100bn of government-backed loans that would be paid back by customers over decades.
A Truss ally who has been lined up for her Cabinet said reports of a freeze were not confirmed - and any help was unlikely to be “as crude” as Labour ’s £29bn six-month total freeze on all bills, which she has branded a "sticking plaster".
But the ally told the Mirror: ”I’m confident she appreciates the scale of the tsunami. I think it will be akin to what we did during Covid.”
They added the answer will be a “multi-layered approach” after temporary Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi worked up a range of options through the summer.
“I’m expecting something quite big in the next few days,” they said. “I don’t think we’re going to mess about”.
Household bills will rocket from £1,277 a year last winter to £3,549 a year this winter - and far higher for businesses, who warn they face financial ruin.
Treasury officials had produced a private report with a range of options, such as raising Universal Credit to help the most vulnerable.
Ms Truss is the favourite to be named the next PM at 12.30pm today, and would then be confirmed by the Queen at Balmoral on Tuesday.
But over a two-month campaign she has refused to say what help she would offer Brits and blasted cash “handouts”, saying tax cuts that help the rich are her first priority.
In a hardline, Thatcherite stance yesterday she said: “To look at everything through the lens of redistribution I believe is wrong”.
Hinting at cuts to pay for her tax breaks, she added: “Not all of those decisions will be popular but I will be honest about what we will have to do."
A Truss ally told the Mirror there was likely to be support for businesses as part of the package - which would be unveiled ahead of an emergency budget, tipped for September 21.
Her likely Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, writing in the FT, said "certainty" and "decisive action is needed" - funded by "fiscal loosening", otherwise called a surge in borrowing.
He said: "As prime minister, Liz will take immediate action if elected that will help people with the challenges we face in the coming months, and lay the groundwork for the change we need in the long term."
But she was blasted last night for telling Brits to wait up to a week to find out what support they’ll get on October 1.
Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry fumed: “We need to have real action and I am disappointed that we have yet to hear a proper plan coming from either of these leadership candidates.”
She feared more than half of families will plunge into fuel-poverty, where they spend 10% of their net income on gas and electricity.
Condemning Ms Truss for not revealing her plan, Ms Thornberry added: "We're going to have the majority of the country in fuel poverty unless something is done.
“What she says is, 'Oh well, I can't possibly tell you, I'll tell you in a week'. Why not?"
Dennis Reed, director of the Silver Voices older people’s group, said he was “pretty appalled”.
He told the Mirror: “It seems that beyond soundbites she hasn’t got much of a clue what to do.
“She has been very precise about income tax cuts and the national insurance increases but she has said virtually nothing about what she will do for the millions of people who will struggle over the winter, and I’m surprised about that.
“She knows who her Chancellor will be and you would have thought, given the extent of the crisis, that the two of them would have got their heads together and have an oven-ready plan available for the first day she takes office.
“If she needs a week it means that there’s a lot still to be done, that’s she’s not really thought about it.
“It’s unforgivable.”
In an extraordinary attack, likely Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng said his own party's 12-year record in power was "toxic".
He wrote in the FT: "The same old economic managerialism has left us with a stagnating economy and anaemic growth, with labour productivity growing at just 0.4% a year since the financial crisis.
"Taxes are now at their highest in 70 years. This toxic combination needs to be urgently addressed."
