Responding to July’s 10.1% nominal rate, the Conservative peer and Asda chairman said: “We have been very, very slow to recognize this train is coming down the tunnel and it has run a lot of people and now we have to deal with the consequences.” Attacking the lack of leadership while Boris Johnson is away on holiday, he said: “We need to take some action. The captain of the ship is on shore, right, no one is in charge right now.” Lord Rose, who is a former Marks & Spencer boss, said action was needed to tackle “pernicious” inflation, which he said was “eroding wealth over time”. He rejected claims from the camp of Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss that it would be possible for the UK to evolve out of the crisis. Rose told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’re sitting here now in the second, third, fourth month of this crisis and we’re still waiting to see what action is going to be taken… I’d like to see us looking after those who need it most.” He said inflation “picks on the poorest, but we have to deal with it, we can’t ignore it”. The peer said he believed interest rates would need to rise further to tackle rising prices and that the UK was “heading for a recession”. Rose, who is backing Truss rival Rishi Sunak to become the next prime minister, criticized the candidates in the Tory leadership race for “throwing money at everything”. As households worry their energy bills will rise even further in October, when the energy price cap is updated, more than 130,000 people have signed a petition backing former prime minister Gordon Brown’s call for an emergency budget to tackle the energy and cost crisis of living. Subscribe to Business Today Get ready for the business day – we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Labor said rising prices had left households worried about how they would make ends meet. “People are worried sick while the Tories are busy fighting and ignoring the scale of this crisis,” said shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves. The chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, responded to the suggestion that the government expected to offer more support to families, saying people would receive £400 of energy bill support over the “next two months”. “The 8 million people who need the most urgent help are getting at least £1,200 extra direct payments to them,” he told reporters. Zahawi also slammed Labour’s plan to freeze energy bills, saying it would reward “people like me who are at the richer end of the spectrum”. UK vs G7 inflation Unison called the cost of living crisis “a living nightmare for millions of workers”. The union – which represents more than 1.3 million members who provide services in education, local government, the NHS, the police and energy – is calling for above-inflation pay rises to help workers cope with soaring prices. “The government and those who want to be the next prime minister seem indifferent to the plight of those struggling to make ends meet,” said Jon Richards, Unison’s assistant general secretary. “Ministers are delusional if they think workers can endure even more misery.” Former Bank of England policymaker Andrew Sentance said the pay rises workers receive could push inflation even higher. “You can see what’s happening in the labor market, with workers trying to recoup some of the cost of living increase through wage increases. If you look at the official figures for wage increases in the private sector, they are around 6%. This is well ahead of what is compatible with a 2% inflation target,” he told the BBC. Sentance, now a senior adviser at consultancy Cambridge Econometrics, said the Bank of England needed to “put the brakes” on wage rises and predicted the Bank could raise interest rates to 4% by the end of the year.
