THE financial difficulties of the County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service are a microcosm of so many of the problems that the government of the new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is going to have to grapple with before the autumn statement on November 17.

After a decade of austerity, there are no more efficiency savings to be found, there are no more cuts to be made that will not go deep into the bone. The service has lost £10m in 12 years and now will start losing firefighters or stations, meaning the service will become stretched – and that could put lives at risk.

Plus rampant inflation is eating up another £750,000-a-year.

With no increase in government money, and no more savings to be found, the only way to fill the hole is to increase tax: the Durham service is asking for £5-a-year from Band D properties, or 10p a week.

That’s not a lot. It is hard to see how anyone could begrudge it.

Yet it is a thin end of the wedge. Practically every public service is in the same boat. One of the bravest things the Johnson government did was introduce the National Insurance rise, called the “health and social care levy”, which would have raised £12.4bn-a-year. That has now gone, but still 7m people are waiting for NHS appointments – how are they going to be paid for?

Only yesterday, we saw the huge backlog in dealing with asylum cases, caused by a lack of investment in staff.

Mr Sunak faces an unenviable task, but also yesterday came an opportunity. Shell recorded quarterly profits of £8.19bn, double on last year’s, and announced plans to increase dividends to shareholders while agreeing that it was braced for further windfall taxes. If the people, hard pressed by energy price rises, are to see their council tax go up to pay for their fire service, shouldn’t the energy companies which are making superprofits in the global crisis also contribute?