Martin's Blog

We have a new Government, and new Chancellor, in Rachel Reeves. I’ve written to her today to highlight some areas of financial injustice we were working on with the previous government before the election (see my letter to Jeremy Hunt), in the hopes of getting things done. Here is the letter sent today (with some added links for further info)… 

I've set out to find the nation's best cheese 'n' onion crisps, with a mass taste test of 44 different packs, sampled by 26 tasters. This is my second data-Crunch – it all started last year, with the glorious best salt 'n' vinegar crisps tasting. Yet some people, strangely (or perhaps more accurately), started to say it couldn't end there, and that I needed do the same with cheese 'n' onion.

No one set out to make dealing with finances difficult for people with mental health issues, but rarely did they think about how to make it easy. So there weren't any 'bad actors', but lots of terrible systems. After having had my own 'dark days', I always vowed that when I could, I wanted to try and do something about it. So in 2016, I set up the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute charity. I'm still the chair of trustees today and provide the core funding as part of my charity fund.

A dozen years ago, in June 2012, MSE joined the Moneysupermarket Group and I pledged £10m to go to charity. As that was a public pledge and I feel a duty of transparency, every year or so I bash out a blog report to explain where I'm up to, and who's got what money.

On the 9 January 2024, Jeremy Hunt the Chancellor of the Exchequer was a guest on ‘ITV The Martin Lewis Money Show’, it was a wide ranging consumer finance interview, you can watch it here. As part of it when I was pushing some key campaigning points, his response was to ask me to write to him. Below is the letter sent today (which I will also send to the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves)…

Outrageously, most people will pay £300 per year just for the facility of having gas and electricity, even if you don't use any. This is due to the high energy standing (daily) charges. These are a moral hazard and should, at the minimum, be substantially reduced – something I am, again, campaigning with the regulator Ofgem to change. So I wanted to bash out this blog to run you through it.

If there was a big red CANCEL CHRISTMAS button, would you press it? While the festive season is usually portrayed as unerringly joyous, not everyone feels that way. It can put stress on you and on your pockets. So, forgive me, but to relieve that pressure, and possibly increase happiness, it is worth considering going cold turkey.

In 2016 I set up the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute charity, and I've chaired it and provided core funding ever since. Last week I was in a trustees' meeting, and got a summary of some of the year's activities from the acting chief exec Conor D'Arcy. It made such good reading, I wanted to share some of it to show exactly how many pies the team there have their fingers in (and how they improve the pies, which is probably where my analogy breaks down).