RISHI SUNAK must immediately announce an emergency budget to tackle the spiralling cost-of-living crisis, the TUC said yesterday.

The union body slammed the measures announced by the Tory Chancellor in his Spring Statement last week as “woefully inadequate” with millions of families at “breaking point.”

The call comes as today’s energy price cap rise hits households nationwide with cripplingly high bills.

Ministers have also chosen to uprate pensions and benefits by just 3.1 per cent – less than half the current consumer prices index inflation rate – and increase national insurance contributions by 1.25 per cent.

The TUC urged Mr Sunak to present emergency measures to Parliament, as he did twice during the Covid-19 pandemic, but this time to get wages rising and bring skyrocketing energy costs down. 

It reiterated calls for a windfall tax on extremely profitable oil and gas companies to help slash energy bills, a “real boost” to universal credit and for the pensions triple lock guarantee to be restored immediately.

An increase in the minimum wage to at least £10 an hour is also desperately needed, the TUC stressed, as today’s 6.6 per cent increase to £9.50 will be “swallowed up” by rising prices.

A full-time worker on the minimum wage will actually see their pay fall by £200 in real terms if inflation hits 8 per cent later this year as predicted, the union body highlighted.

The United Voices of the World union, which represents low-paid, predominantly migrant workers, backed the call, saying the new minimum is a “poverty wage” and “simply too low to live on” with its members having to choose between “heating and eating.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “This is a living standards emergency. We need a proper package of economic support for families.

“Britain faces the worst living standards crisis in generations. We need an emergency budget to bring down energy bills and to boost pay, universal credit and pensions.”

Unite union leader Sharon Graham slammed Mr Sunak for “tinkering around the edges of this shocking cost-of-living crisis.

“Workers face sleepless nights worrying about how to make ends meet.

“Rishi Sunak has done nothing to tackle the corporate elite, the billionaires who stash their loot but sack UK workers by Zoom.

“Once again, ordinary working people bear the broadest burden while the super-rich get off scot-free.”

She urged ministers to join the union’s new workers’ commission on profiteering, which will “bring together experts and workers to uncover who has profited while others have suffered” during the pandemic.  

“Working people are paying for bad decisions made by powerful people,” she added. “The rebirth of the union movement must now begin.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has described the government’s response to the crisis as “pathetic,” while shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said its “out of touch” policies are making the situation worse.

“The Conservatives should adopt Labour’s plans for a one-off windfall tax to cut household energy bills by up to £600 – and do so as fast as possible,” she demanded.

The government insists it is doing all it can to support the most vulnerable, but the End Fuel Poverty Coalition published research yesterday noting that a group of Tory MPs in Midlands and northern English seats represent more than 178,000 households which will now be in fuel poverty.

Tory seats in Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham, Newcastle and Grimsby are set to be hit particularly hard, it said.

The campaign group’s new league table suggests 6.3 million homes will be dragged into hardship by today’s price hikes, with the 10 per cent of worst affected constituencies mainly being urban areas represented by Labour.