£3,549 is a figure that will be seared across the minds of households in Britain.

It had long been predicted, but the jump of £1,578 in the annual cost of energy bills won’t hurt any less because it.

Everyone is going to struggle but it’s inconceivable how people on low incomes will manage to cope.

To put the cost into perspective, the new energy cap means average monthly bills of £295 a month.

The standard allowance for Universal Credit is just £335 a month.

Even worse, many people on low incomes – around 4.5 million households – are on pre-payment meters and, unbelievably, their bills are going up even more – to an average of £3,608.

To pile on the misery, people on direct debit payment plans can spread the cost of the bills throughout the year, balancing cost of winter months when gas bills are high for heating against summer months when little or no gas is used.

People on pre-payment meters can’t do this. They have to pay for the energy as they use it – and it’s predicted that their costs in the coldest month could reach as high as £600.

The cap is forecast to rise yet again and take bills to over £5,000 in January.

Clearly, we are well past the stage where advising people to wear warm clothing and turn down their heating by a degree or two is a valid response from the Government and energy companies.

These are not normal times, and we need radical Government intervention.

Labour’s proposals for a fully funded freeze to the price cap is the scale we need to be thinking of.

It will immediately give reassurance to families that energy bills aren’t going to continue spiralling out of control and allow them to budget.

It will also reduce the cost to the Government. Energy costs form a large percentage of the inflation rate. If energy bills are frozen then inflation will not rise as high as forecast. This will lower wage demands and cut the cost of Government borrowing linked to the rate of inflation.

This can’t all be paid for by reduced costs though and it is only right that the energy companies should be made to pay more, which is why Labour is proposing an extension of the Windfall Tax that the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to introduce.

If the energy companies are charging so much that it requires a government subsidy to enable people to pay, then it cannot be right that they are making bumper profits.

They should either reduce their prices so that their profits are significantly reduced or be taxed heavily on the profits they are making.

There needs to be much more help for businesses too. Their energy bills are not capped, and they are facing such eyewatering increases that many will go out of business over winter unless there is a Covid-style support package.

And after the immediate short-term help, we need a massive programme of investment to increase our energy security and reduce bills.

The short-sighted decision to close virtually all Britain’s gas storage should be reversed.

Britain’s draughty, poorly insulated buildings need a huge upgrade to cut bills and our energy usage.

There needs to be a step-change in the production of renewable energy. Rules effectively banning onshore wind turbines should be scrapped. Property developers should be forced to install solar panels on all new buildings.

This is a major national crisis – bigger in many ways even than Covid – and it needs a major coordinated national response.

But we have heard nothing from the current Government which appears to have gone AWOL. Boris Johnson has spent his last weeks in office partying at the taxpayers’ expense and not a single minister would talk to the media when the new energy cap was announced.

Neither of the two candidates fighting each other for the leadership of the Conservative Party seems to get it either.

One of Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss is going to be our next Prime Minister. They’ve had weeks to come up with solutions, but their proposals so far amount to tinkering that will cut a couple of hundred pounds from household bills that are going up by thousands.

The new Prime Minister needs to recognise the scale of the problem.

Unless the Government acts – and acts quickly – people are going to starve or freeze this winter, businesses are going to go to wall and our economy is going to be tipped into a major recession.