Sunak pledges £10bn to help vulnerable with soaring energy bills

theguardian.com:

Rishi Sunak has said he would find up to £10bn to help people facing rising energy bills, as a minister backing his Conservative leadership rival indicated that direct support for the hard-pressed would be announced “in a considered way”.

Acknowledging he would have to increase government borrowing to tackle the crisis, the former chancellor sketched out what he envisaged would be a support package for up to 16 million vulnerable people.

“People need reassurance now about what we will do and I make no apology for concentrating on what matters most,” Sunak wrote in the Times, which reported that he valued a cut to VAT on energy at £5bn.

He was also said to have pledged to find the same amount again to go towards helping those most in need, as he said: “You can’t heat your home with hope.”

It comes after Sunak claimed Liz Truss’s cost-of-living plans could put vulnerable people at risk of “real destitution”, with economic policy once again driving a wedge between the candidates.

As Sunak and Truss took to the stage for the latest Tory party hustings in Cheltenham, Sunak refused to rule out “some limited and temporary one-off borrowing as a last resort to get us through this winter”.

He also said that without further direct payments, pensioners and people on very low incomes could face serious hardship.

However, the work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, who is supporting Truss, hit back on Friday morning, taking a veiled swipe at Sunak for not waiting for the energy regulator Ofgem to make a key announcement about the energy price cap before his latest intervention.

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Defending Truss, Coffey said: