JUST IN: Good Morning Britain halted minutes in for breaking Andy Burnham news
Good Morning Britain’s Louisa Jameson delivered an Andy Burnham update from Downing Street (Image: ITV)
Minutes after coming on air at 6am, lGood Morning Britain was halted to share the news the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced a huge change to the public’s electricity bills. Political Correspondent Louisa Jameson was outside Downing Street and told the studio had she had received the update “in the last minute or so”.
“Andy Burnham is going to basically cut our energy bills,” she said. “He’s going to take VAT off electricity bills specifically. The email from the government says he is taking immediate action to give millions of households breathing space this winter. It is going to be paid for by scrapping the digital ID scheme, which was one of Keir Starmer’s ideas. It’s something that Andy Burnham said immediately that he wasn’t going to go ahead with. What it means is that there will be about £45 off the yearly electricity bill for the average household,” she said.
She continued: “That will start in October, and that is on top of the £150 pounds removed from bills at the last budget.
“It is the first thing that Andy Burnham has announced as part of what he said is an attempt to give people something they can feel and feel quickly.
“He has said that it won’t take all the pressure off. It won’t fix everything. But he wants to give people the direction of travel, as he puts it, and the idea that this is a government that is going to help people.”
Opining as to his reasoning she said: “I think that is a big part of wanting to be different from Keir Starmer in both what he does and how he puts it.
Andy Burnham has announced his first changes since becoming Prime Minister (Image: Getty)
“Don’t forget, Keir Starmer came into office saying things were going to get worse before they got better, and then the first thing he did was not a giveaway, but to take away that winter fuel allowance.
“One of the big questions, though, with anything like this, with any cost of living giveaway, any help for people, is how they are going to pay for it.
“They’ve obviously explained this time that it’s going to come from the digital ID scheme.
“But they’ve also said that any other promises will be fully funded, and that ultimately means either finding the spending elsewhere or cutting spending from elsewhere, or raising taxes,” she said.
