Energy price crisis: Liz Truss needs to get a move on with help for small businesses – Scotsman comment

As small businesses find themselves caught in Catch-22 that threatens bankruptcy for some – unable to increase prices because hard-pressed consumers will stop buying, but forced to pay sky-high prices for raw materials and energy – the UK Government still has not laid out the all-important details of its package of help.

Liz Truss needs to move quickly to get help to small businesses amid the soaring costs of raw materials and energy (Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images)

A spokesperson for the Prime Minister promised there will be more information about the business support scheme next week, but added ominously that help for firms with their October energy bills would be backdated if necessary, suggesting further delays.

Hundreds of thousands of firms will reach the end of their fixed-price energy contracts at the end of this month. And as Martin McTague, of the Federation of Small Businesses, pointed out, they still do not know the answers to a string of basic questions like how much will they need to pay from October 1.

He stressed that “done in the right way” the government could provide a “lifeline” for small businesses this winter; the obvious flipside to his remark is that, without an effective lifeline, companies will go under and the current economic crisis will get worse.

News that the upcoming House of Commons recess period may be shortened to speed up the process only serves to further cast the leisurely election campaign to select Boris Johnson’s successor – and the absence of effective government this created – in an even poorer light.

If one of the first major acts of Liz Truss’s government is effectively dither and delay as the economy goes off the rails, the judgement of history and indeed the electorate will not be kind.