While Liz Truss spent the summer focused on Tory infighting, families and pensioners have been worried sick about how they’ll pay their bills.

They have been left in limbo by her refusal to set out a clear plan on tackling soaring energy bills. The whole spectacle just proves how Liz Truss and the Conservatives are completely out of touch with the British people. Liz Truss' energy plan is a loan not a freeze. That's just not right.We should be making the oil and gas companies who are making tens of billions of pounds in unexpected profit pay some of that back so we can afford to freeze bills fairly. pic.twitter.com/78D0KmrBu2 — Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) September 6, 2022 But Liberal Democrats have a fair plan to protect people and businesses from sky-high energy bills this winter - and we know how to pay for it. We would scrap October’s energy price hike, freezing bills at their current level. We’d pay for this by extending and backdating the windfall tax on oil and gas companies’ huge, unexpected profits. And we’d give small and medium sized businesses direct support with their bills. With grants of up to £50,000 to pay for 80% of rising bills that would be paid for by reversing the Conservatives’ tax breaks for banks. This is an emergency that is on track to become a catastrophe. We cannot afford to sit idly by any longer.  But we can’t leave our children to pick up the tab through even more borrowing while letting oil and gas companies off the hook. That’s how Liz Truss would have it. Our plan is a much fairer and more responsible way to tackle this crisis - and the Conservatives must adopt it without delay.