Rachel Reeves' full response to the Chancellor's
statement:
***CHECK AGAINST
DELIVERY***
Mr Speaker, can I thank the Chancellor for his statement.
We’ve known this price rise has been coming for months.
That’s why I called in October for the government to provide
immediate support for households, cutting VAT on their energy
bills to 0%, and saving £200 off bills,
with £400 in extra targeted support for those who need it
most.
We all remember when the Prime Minister said that cutting VAT
on energy bills was one of the benefits of Brexit.
“When we Vote Leave, we will be able to scrap this unfair and
damaging tax.”
Could there ever be a time where this policy was needed more
than today?
I would have thought that the Prime Minister with his
unblemished record of integrity would defend the commitments
he made.
Instead, it is yet another pledge thrown onto the bonfire of
Tory broken promises.
And the uncomfortable truth for the Chancellor is that even
after what he has announced today,
families in Britain will still be paying hundreds of pounds
more for their energy from April as a result of the
breath-taking rise in energy prices just announced by Ofgem.
Millions of people cutting back to pay the bills.
Citizens Advice saw a record number of people in January
struggling with fuel debts.
But what do the Government offer?
A buy now, pay later scheme that loads up costs for tomorrow.
High prices as far as the eye can see, this year, next year,
and the year after that.
Give with one hand now and take it all back later.
The party opposite used to talk about the nation’s credit
card.
Well today Mr. Speaker – we’ve seen the Chancellor force
British households to load their credit card.
By lending billions of pounds to the energy companies, the
Chancellor is gambling that prices are going to fall.
They could go up further in October.
What then? Billions more loaded onto people’s bills?
The best of targeting support to those who need it most would
be an increase to £400 and extension to 9 million households
of the Warm Homes Discount, as Labour has proposed.
But instead the Chancellor is using council tax to target
extra help.
It’s a crude measure that will mean many of the poorest
households get no extra support, while some of the richest
do.
And its people living in the North and the Midlands who will
lose out.
This hypocrisy, the day after this government’s ‘levelling
up’ white paper, beggars belief.
Mr Speaker, the government had a choice.
Only today Shell announced their profits have quadrupled to
$20 billion.
They described their results as ‘momentous’.
Dividends up.
Profits up.
And people’s energy bills up too.
Labour’s plan would impose a one-off tax on these excess
profits.
But this Chancellor would rather shield the oil and gas
producers, while at the same time loading the cost onto
working people and pensioners.
Cabinet ministers have described the oil and gas producers as
'struggling'.
Struggling?
Tell that to the 1 in 5 people who are already skipping meals
so they can pay their energy bills.
Mr Speaker, the energy crisis hasn’t happened overnight.
It’s a decade of dither and delay from the party opposite
that has brought us to this point.
It’s their failure that has left us uniquely exposed.
A decade of failure to regulate our energy market.
A decade in which they have slashed our gas storage capacity,
leaving us reliant on imports from Russia.
A decade of failure to make the most of solar, tidal and wind
energy.
A decade of stalled progress on insulating homes.
It has been this Tory decade that has led to this
announcement, Mr Speaker, of the biggest increase in the
price of domestic energy since records began.
That is what the Chancellor should acknowledge and apologise
for today.
The Conservatives aren’t solving the cost of living crisis -
because they are the cost of living crisis.
