How the government can support people hardest hit by energy price rises

One option would be to use the winter fuel payment as a template to help older people, writes Hamish McRae

The harder thing is to make sure that the right people are helped (EPA)

It is a tough one, but the government has to do it. It must find more effective ways to support the people hardest hit by the surge in energy prices, for so far it is not doing very well. There is obvious political pressure to take action, as the prime minister has just discovered but there also should be moral pressure. Governments cannot fix everything, but there are things they can do to help vulnerable people in an emergency. This is an emergency.

If you look around Europe, the various governments have taken different approaches to tackle the energy crisis. The Bruegel think tank in Brussels keeps a good tally of what is being done here. Some have focussed on cutting energy taxation and/or directly regulating prices. A few have given instructions to state-owned energy providers, while others have levied higher taxation on private companies. Businesses that use a lot of power have also been helped. But the most universal way of helping people has been to make transfers to the most vulnerable. That includes the UK – indeed the only countries in Europe that are not making such transfers are Bulgaria and Hungary.

So the encouraging message is that there are a variety of things that can be done and countries can learn from each other the most effective ways of dealing with the crisis. The less encouraging message is that the UK may not have been as effective as it could be, even though it is much less reliant on oil and gas from Russia that the rest of Europe, and so on the face it, less impacted by the dreadful events that are happening in Ukraine.