Gas

What the 2026 Budget does for a couple living only on the full new State Pension, £25,095 a year between them, heating a home with gas at 13,375 kWh a year and running a petrol car for 4,000 miles. A ledger from the Treasury’s own document: the £100 Household Energy Payment, 0% VAT on electricity, the fuel duty cut, the gas standing charge moving into the unit rate, which costs a high gas user money, and the Gas Shipper Obligation moving to general taxation, which for once helps. Then the things that do not show on a bill: an income £119 a week too high for Pension Credit and the help with glasses that comes with it, a mandatory eyesight check for older drivers under consultation, fiscal drag that takes their room under the Personal Allowance rather than cash, a Pension Tax Allowance patching it that runs out a year before the freeze does and taxes a £790 workplace annuity that indexing would have left alone, the Triple Lock adjustment from April 2030 worth £15 billion a year to the Treasury by the late 2030s, and the insulation and heat pump money that would have helped them most, cut or taxed.