The main part of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget was a package which would guarantee businesses certainty over energy prices, as has already been put in place for homeowners.

Shops, factories and offices - as well as public sector buildings such as schools and hospitals - will now face a maximum charge of £211 per MWh for electricity and £75 per MWh for gas.

These figures are around half of what the market would currently be charging.

It is an unprecedented intervention by the state, one which is going to cost a significant amount of money - currently around £10bn a month.

But it is necessary to ensure that companies and public services can thrive in the middle of an energy crisis brought about by war involving the world’s biggest producer of gas.

Opponents of the UK government say it could all have been paid for by either taxing the oil companies, or the very rich, or both.

It sounds plausible until you look at the figures.

Any company producing gas, oil or electricity is making a big profit at the moment because of the huge world demand.

Oil companies based in the North Sea are already paying up to 65 per cent tax instead of the standard rate of 19 per cent.

In other words, they are already being taxed to the hilt.

We should be pleased to be getting a tax rate of more than three times the standard company rate and be hoping that more companies invest in the North Sea and pay huge taxes rather than taxing them out of existence.

The argument about the additional (45 per cent) rate also falls flat after a look at the figures.

This tax brought in around £2bn a year out of a total of £228bn of income tax.

The last time it was reduced (from 50 per cent to 45 per cent) revenue from the very well off increased.

We all want to have cheap gas, electricity and petrol, and high quality but affordable food.

Over the last two and a half years, the country faced two “once in a lifetime” events – a global Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.

These have dealt great blows to the economy and driven up the costs of those things which we take for granted.

The UK government is right to do whatever it takes to ensure that in the face of world turbulence, our standards of living continue to grow.