LABOUR’S Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has said that National Grid’s scheme to pay people not to use power will do little to ease financial pressure on households.
He told GB News: “There is a lot more that can be done in terms of how people use energy and how they learn about efficiency, and the time of day that they use it. But I think we’ve got to be frank and say, when you compare energy bills today to just a few months or a few years ago, the kind of pressures people are under cannot be resolved by measures like this.
“What’s needed alongside it is commensurate support from government. Obviously, under our plans, we have a more expansive windfall tax.
“We wouldn’t have those big gaps for fossil fuel investment, we would have more resources so we wouldn’t for instance see the reduction in the level of support this April that households would have.
“We’d also provide more support to businesses. So yes, we’ll try innovation, new ideas, absolutely but let’s be clear, households and businesses still need some support this April to a higher degree than the government had brought forward so far.”
In an interview during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he said: “There is no doubt that the last 15 years have been very poor historically, for the economy and living standards in the UK.
“On top of that, they haven’t really articulated a way to make Brexit work for the long term future of the country. And finally, I think they haven’t built on the opportunities of this big transition to low carbon energy, which the whole of the world is now engaged upon.
“So from my part, I think we have more ambitious plans for all three of those things, but also we are there to tell people genuinely we believe that the kind of answers the country needs requires a partnership between business and politicians, and we believe we in the Labour Party are the best partner for that.
“That message, that work over the last 18 months has generated quite a lot of success. The chairman of Tesco, John Allen, has said that on this agenda only Labour is on the pitch.”
He added: “There’s a big job for us. There’s a lot of people to win over following that very significant electoral defeat for us in the last general election, but we think we’re doing it…
“We’re going to continue working very hard because we think this country could be doing a lot better than it is under the Conservative Party. And the chance to serve, the chance to do that is all that we’re about.”
Asked about the incident in the House of Commons when Rosie Duffield MP was heckled by her own colleagues in a debate on women’s rights, he said: “Labour has more female MPs and male MPs have a shadow cabinet that I’m a member of is absolutely packed with leading female figures
“So I absolutely do believe we are the party of that…
“I was aware in the commons there was some controversy around that debate, but I think the policy positions and the personnel we’ve got are absolutely in the right place on these issues.”
