Labour’s Shadow Minister for Levelling Up, Alex Norris, says his party is interested in the pay rates for the 99.9% – rather than focusing on executive salaries.
Speaking to GB News, Mr Norris said he has seen “a lot of anger” from people angry at people making money from the cost-of-living crisis.
“When people are being told they have to suppress their own pay it’s very hard to see those at the top getting the pay increases they’re getting,” he said.
“There’s rightly a lot of anger and I’ve had a number of emails when we start to see that uptick again in petrol prices.
“The number of people who suddenly now are taking a lot more interest in, say, crude oil prices and they would have done in previous years to say – ‘Why is this disconnect there?’
“And for us it goes back to that point that we’ve been making throughout this crisis: Not just having a windfall tax but a proper one that doesn’t have those loopholes so that companies aren’t profiteering and that money is going back into making life easy for those who are really struggling. That’s the fairest thing to do.
“There shouldn’t be people making those outsized, unexpected profits and we should be using that money to make sure that people are able to keep their heads above water.”
Presenter Eamonn Holmes traded Elvis lyrics with Mr Horris as they discussed the economic situation in the UK, with the Ulsterman asking if the economy is “stuck in a growth trap.”
“It’ time for ‘a little less conversation, a little more action’”, Mr Norris replied.
“There are things that we can do. Take, for example, there’ll be farmers watching this program having come in from their morning’s work.
“They’re saying that they want a proper, bespoke deal with the EU on veterinary standards that will allow them to turbocharge their trading across the channel.
“That’s the sort of thing we could do to get our economy growing.
“Then we have more longer term, but absolutely crucial, types of activity in terms of regaining our economy to high skills, high wages in the green technologies.
“We shouldn’t be importing those wind turbine photovoltaic cells, we should be making them here in my community here, in Nottingham, giving people those skills to generate that productivity growth.
“That’s what we’ll see rather than what we’ve had – years and years of not going anywhere from a government that just doesn’t have a plan.”
