By Stefan Boscia
Parliament will return tomorrow from a six-week summer recess with the government facing a series of crises and a busy legislative agenda.
Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will be sworn in as Prime Minister on Tuesday, after tomorrow’s Tory leadership announcement, with the eventual winner expected to bring forward a cost of living support package in the coming weeks.
Truss, the presumptive Prime Minister, today said she would outline her plan this week if victorious and would bring forward a mini-budget to parliament by the end of the month.
Truss indicated during a BBC interview that families and businesses would receive direct support to combat spiralling energy prices, with household bills set to almost triple this autumn.
A Treasury insider told the Sunday Times that Truss’ cost of living package and swathe of tax cuts will likely cost in the region of £100bn and be brought to parliament within weeks.
“They’re talking in terms of this being a pandemic-sized package,” they said.
Parliament is also expected to debate the government’s reforms to financial services regulation post-Brexit in the coming months.
The government’s Financial Services and Markets Bill, which was published in July, sets up a mechanism to bin EU financial services regulations one-at-a-time and either replace them with completely new rules or with none at all.
Truss and Sunak have both committed to move quickly on these post-Brexit changes, with the Solvency II regulation on insurance firms among the first rules set to be eased.
The government’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill will also start to make its way through parliament, however it is expected that it could take some time to pass through both houses.
The legislation, which the EU claims is a breach of international law, effectively overrides the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol and ends most checks on goods going between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The post UK parliament resumes with overflowing in-tray for the government appeared first on CityAM.
