Tsar hopes next PM share's Boris's 'passion' for helping with cost of living crisis
21 July 2022, 09:37 | Updated: 21 July 2022, 09:52
Nick Ferrari quizzes UK Cost of Living Business Tsar David Buttress
The Government's cost of living tsar expressed hope that the next Prime Minister will share the "same sort of excitement and passion" as Boris Johnson for the new Government initiative to help households with the cost of living crisis.
Cost of Living Tsar David Buttress has been working with major UK businesses as part of the government's Help for Households imitative.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari at Breakfast, David Buttress said: "As I think about this campaign and why I got involved, you can do two things when you're facing challenges like that: you can sort of let them happen or you can rise to the challenge.
Read more: Help for Households: Top retailers come together in bid to slash costs for Brits
"When I met with the Prime Minister to come and do this campaign I saw a lot of energy and real rigor to get something done and rise to that challenge, and so we're going to look at this campaign too, of course, we can't completely mitigate the challenges we're all going face, but it's about helping where we can and working with British business to promote the best of what they're doing."
He added: "I hope whoever the new Prime Minister is will have the same sort of excitement and passion for this project, of course, as the current Prime Minister, and I'm sure they will because as we just discussed, cost of living and the pressures of it are very real and Help for Households, I think as you can see today, we've already got off to a decent start with lots more good stuff to come.
"So I'm very sure that the new PM, whoever it is, will be hopefully as passionate, and of course Rishi Sunak as you know, when he was chancellor obviously supported this scheme and the packages that sit within it, so I'm sure that'll be the case."
Read more: Inflation rises to fresh 40-year high of 9.4% as cost of living crisis bites
Read more: Cost of living payments: When is the £326 due and which households qualify?
Businesses agreed to slash checkout costs as part of a new Help for Households campaign from the Government.
It comes as the surging cost of living is pushing more and more families towards breaking point, with rising food and fuel prices sending inflation to a 40-year high.
The deals - agreed by the Government's cost-of-living tsar and former Just Eat chief David Buttress - include the extension of supermarket giant Asda's scheme allowing children to buy a meal for £1, and the introduction of a "feed your family for a fiver" campaign by Sainsbury's.
