Fuel poverty is creating a left-out generation that will never recover from the scars | Gordon Brown

Only an emergency budget can prevent millions more families from falling into destitution that will mark their children for decades

The more the Conservative leadership election heats up, the more the remaining candidates have resorted to claiming the moral high ground. Raising debt is “immoral”, Rishi Sunak is saying. “High taxes are ‘immoral’,” retorts Liz Truss. But there is nothing moral about indifferent leaders condemning millions of vulnerable and blameless children and pensioners to a winter of dire poverty.

The reality is grim and undeniable: a financial timebomb will explode for families in October as a second round of fuel price rises in six months sends shockwaves through every household and pushes millions over the edge. A few months ago, Jonathan Bradshaw and Antonia Keung at York University estimated that April’s 54% increase in fuel prices would trap 27 million people in 10m households in fuel poverty. Now, 35 million people in 13m households – an unprecedented 49.6% of the population of the United Kingdom – are under threat of fuel poverty in October.

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