Cost of Living: "There really is no time to waste!"

Ben Cottam Head of the Federation of Small Businesses in Wales' message to Ms. Truss is to 'take action now, before it's too late.' He told us how many business owners are telling him they are at risk of bankruptcy due to rising energy bills and the cost of living crisis in general. He acknowledges Liz Truss has taken over at an unenviable time saying "she's not going to have a great deal of time to really sort of peruse the landscape. There are some real immediate threats to business and enterprise across the UK that are going to need her immediate attention. We want her to hit the ground running and look at those immediate needs."

Welsh political leaders are all calling on Liz Truss to make the cost of living emergency her key focus. In a joint statement, Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price MS and the party’s Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts MP said: "The first action of the new PM must be to slash energy bills by returning the energy price cap to pre-April levels and extend it to small businesses and charities. It is unacceptable that people are still in the dark about how they’ll pay their bills in a matter of weeks."

The FSB Wales' Ben Cottam told us how businesses don't have the same protection as individual consumers. "We're seeing businesses come to the end of their fixed price contracts with their energy supplies. We're getting examples of supplies that won't fix on a new, astronomical tariff. Yet we're seeing other businesses that have to just go with the market. And so we're seeing hundreds of percent rise in energy bills as a result of that. Now that is not just not credible. The numbers do not stack up for business owners when you are having that very unpredictable cost and that's only that's only one part of a bag of significant cost increases in the cost of doing business overall.

"The cost of living starts with the cost of doing business crisis to make sure that people are in secure stable jobs. And they able to combat this themselves. We need credible businesses or we need stable businesses that are able to provide stable employment."

With businesses still recovering from the pandemic and facing the toughest Winter quite possibly in their lifetime - the focus is on the need for financial support to get them through the next few months and beyond. It's not just about the price cap extension according to Ben, he says: "We need direct cash to support businesses and much the same way as government is seeking to do with households. We need to see a cash intervention. Now we know this is going to be a significant cost. There is undoubtedly that is going to be the case. We need to look at this though as an investment that makes sure that businesses continue, that they can continue to support those they employ. That is the most important thing over the over the coming weeks and months to make sure that employment stays where it is, that people feel empowered and able to manage all the other inflationary costs that they that they face."

"At the moment for so many businesses, that is a very, very difficult calculation. They have bared down where they can and at the problem at the moment is the only options open to them are to reduce the number of those they employ. We know from the pandemic that that is the last thing that business owners want to do. They know how important their employees are. So government needs to step up now to make sure that that an unenviable decision isn't faced by business owners across Wales."