First Minister visits Forfar breakfast club

Ms Sturgeon went along to Lowson Memorial Church’s free breakfast club on Thursday where she met with volunteers delivering the service and discussed the cost of living concerns with families who are using the service.

She also met with church minister, Rev Karen Fenwick, who spoke about the background of the project and the service it provides.

The visit took place ahead of a Scottish Government Resilience Committee meeting chaired by Ms Sturgeon to discuss urgent steps to mitigate the growing cost of the emergency, which is affecting people and business.

Speaking after the visit, Ms Sturgeon said: “It is clear that the UK currently faces a rapidly escalating emergency that goes beyond simply the cost of living and is now a more general cost of everything crisis.

"This emergency may be of a different nature to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is on a similar scale.

“In the absence of substantial and urgent action, this emergency will cause acute deprivation and suffering.

"It will affect access to practical necessities for millions of people across the UK. Bluntly, it will cost lives.

“To illustrate the severity of the situation, the Scottish Government estimates that, even with current UK Government mitigations, at least 700,000 households in Scotland - 30 per cent of all households - will be living in extreme fuel poverty by October.

"That number could be even higher, if the Ofgem price cap for October 2022 is above £2,800.

“It is essential, therefore, that the response from government at every level is commensurate, in scale and speed, to the nature and magnitude of the emergency.

“In developing a response, governments must first and foremost address immediate need.

"We must all focus on supporting individuals, businesses and jobs by addressing the principal root causes of the problem.

“Scottish Ministers are clear that the powers and resources needed to tackle this emergency on the scale required - access to borrowing, welfare, VAT on fuel, taxation of windfall profits, regulation of the energy market - lie with the UK Government,” she added.