OUR new PM recently set out ambitious plans to help households and businesses with rising energy bills.

I intended to write about this issue last week, but when the Queen passed away I naturally wanted to pay tribute to her extraordinary life of public service.

My article, along with my tribute to Her Majesty in the House of Commons, can be read and watched at: www.melstridemp.com .

I broadly welcome the support with energy bills – a package of measures for households and businesses that will potentially cost £150 billion over two years.

The total cost will depend on how energy prices fluctuate over the next two years, but to give that figure some context we spend around £85 billion a year on primary and secondary education put together.

The £150 billion will be spent subsidising energy bills for households for the next two years through a cap that means a typical household energy bill will be capped at £2,500 a year.

Since the average bill was projected to rise to more than £3,500, this will on average save families around £1,000 a year.

An equivalent package of support has been pledged for businesses (for at least six months) and I discussed this during a visit to the Royal Oak in Exminster last Friday.

New owners Mel and Scott are settling in well after taking over the pub a fortnight ago and I wanted to wish them well. We talked about the challenges facing the pub industry and small businesses in general, and energy bills were at the centre of our discussion. In many cases businesses are being impacted more than residential properties because of the amount of electricity that some businesses need to use.

As Chair of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, I will be scrutinising the support for businesses and urging the Government to look beyond this initial six-month period. Businesses need to be able to plan ahead and can only do this if they have as much certainty as possible.

To help fund these support measures I have pressed the Government to reconsider a windfall tax on energy firms (you can watch me make this argument in the House of Commons at: www.melstridemp.com/energycap).

It would most likely generate around £4 billion - a significant contribution. We also need an independent forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility of how much these measures are likely to cost and their impact on the economy as a whole.

The bottom line, though, is that something had to be done. During the pandemic, the support provided to businesses and the self-employed was expensive but was preferable to thousands of businesses going bust and mass unemployment.

Similarly, these measures will hit the public finances hard, but they will make a big difference, particularly for low-income households, for pensioners and for many businesses.