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Energy bills will be £4,266 for a typical household by January, according to the consultancy Cornwall Insight, which had put the sum at £3,616 only a week earlier. Ofgem had decided since then to shorten the period over which suppliers can recover their costs. Gordon Brown, prime minister 2007-10, declared that Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, competitors to succeed him, must hold an emergency Budget to deal with the ‘financial timebomb’ of energy prices. ‘If they do not,’ he said, ‘parliament should be recalled to force them to do so.’ Liz Truss, in an interview with the Financial Times, said she would help people with the cost of living ‘in a Conservative way of lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts’. Sunak seized on the remark, saying: ‘It’s simply wrong to rule out further direct support at this time, as Liz Truss has done.’
The numbers waiting more than two years for routine operations in England fell from 22,500 at the start of the year, to fewer than 200, according to the NHS; overall waiting lists continued to grow. The proportion of people testing positive for coronavirus fell to one in 25 in England and one in 20 in Scotland (from one in 20 and one in 19 a week earlier), according to surveys by the Office for National Statistics. Archie Battersbee, aged 12, was confirmed to be dead after life-support treatment was withdrawn by the Royal London Hospital, where he had been in a coma since April; his parents had opposed court rulings for life-support to end.
Southern England was beset by hosepipe bans as drought dragged on under a hot sun; Thames Water, with 15 million customers, planned a ban in coming weeks.
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