Tories accuse Labour of 'no consistency', saying Starmer backed universal energy support packge when in opposition
Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, responded for the Tories. He claimed the economy was “in tatters” under Reeves. He criticised Labour for not allowing more drilling in the North Sea. And he said that when Rishi Sunak was PM, Keir Starmer was calling for the govenrment’s energy support package to be universal. There had been “no consistency” from Labour, he claimed.
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Reeves confirms contingency planning for energy support package under way, and insists it would be fairer than Tories' version
Reeves ended her speech covering direct support for people affect by energy price rises.
Referring to action already taken, she said:
We don’t yet know what the full impact of this conflict will be. So we must be agile in responding appropriately at each moment.
We extended the five fuel duty cuts and we have pushed out the cheaper fuel finder, empowering people to avoid rip off prices and chasing down the last few filling stations to reach 100% compliance.
And when wholesale kerosene prices more than doubled overnight, we stepped in with £53m of support to those who needed it most within a matter of days, and from next week households will benefit from £150 off of their energy bills thanks to the action that I took in my budget, with a price cap giving households certainty on their bills until July.
She criticised the household support package introduced when the last Conservative government was in power (originally by Liz Truss, although it was subsequently watered down when Rishi Sunak was PM). It was a universal support scheme, and Reeves said it meant “households in the top income decile received an average of £1,350 of direct energy bill support”.
That added to high levels of national debt, Reeves said.
Implying she would take a different approaching, targeting help on the poorest, she said:
I can confirm to the house that contingency planning is taking place for every eventuality so that we can keep costs down for everyone and provide support for those who need it most, acting within our ironclad fiscal rules to keep inflation and interest rates as low as possible.
Reeves says government will ensure CMA has powers it needs to crack down on price gouging
Reeves says helping people with the cost of living is a priority, and she lists various measures, already implemented to help achieve this.
And she says she is giving the Competition and Markets Authority new powers to deal with price gouging.
Today I can announce that we are going further to make sure that the Competition and Markets Authority have the powers that they need that were denied to them by the previous government to detect and to crack down on price gouging.
She says the government will bring in “a new anti-profiteering framework” and is conssering giving time-limited targeted powers to the CMA and other regulators.
She goes on:
This government will not tolerate any company exploiting this crisis.
Reeves announces indemnities for critical energy security projects, to reduce planning delays
Reeves says the government is working on energy security.
The last governments failure to invest in energy was a failure to protect our country. But through determined action, this government is taking control of our own energy supply and investing in renewables, lifting the ban on onshore wind and streamlining grid connections.
[The government is] running the biggest offshore wind auction in European history last year and bringing the next renewable auction forward to this July, and driving forward negotiation on the UK’s participation in the EU internal energy electricity market.
She says she can announce that the government will legislate in the next session to implement the recommendations of the Fingleton review, which will allow a new generation of nuclear power stations to be rolled out.
She also says the government will change planning rules to allow more power infrastructure to be built. There will be indemnities for critical energy security projects.
This is how the Treasury explained this in a briefing.
Currently, when planning consent for a major project is legally challenged, construction can be forced to stall - meaning vital infrastructure is held up by the courts even where consent has been granted. The proposed indemnities would keep priority projects moving in those circumstances, protecting energy security and keeping the path to lower bills on track.
Reeves says the UK is working with others to deal with the consequences of the war.
She says Keir Starmer has said the UK will work with other countries on a plan to keep the strait of Hormuz open. And she says the UK is working with partners on defence partnerships, and on releasing oil reserves.
Rachel Reeves makes statement to MPs about economic impact of Iran war
Before the statement starts, Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, says he does not normally allow government statements on opposition days (days when the time is allocated to the opposition). He says he will not run this for long.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, starts by saying the economic impact of the Iran war is uncertain. She says the Bank of England expects inflation to be between 3% and 3.5% for the next few quarters.
The Unite union has backed the industry group Offshore Energies UK’s call for more support for the oil and gas industry. In a statement today Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said:
North Sea workers are losing their jobs, at a time when the need for domestic oil and gas has never been greater.
We all know that whatever happens the UK will still need for oil and gas for decades to come and the war in Iran is just the latest reminder that when we rely on overseas production our energy security is at the mercy of global events.
In the Commons Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, is taking questions.
Claire Coutinho, his Tory shadow, has just asked him why he is “ideologically obsessed with shutting down the North Sea”.
Miliband said the government was continuting to use oil and gas from the North Sea.
Coutinho then asked Miliband why he preferred “to import dirtier gas from abroad than use the gas that we have in the North Sea”.
Miliband said the government’s position was “pragmatic”. While the Tories wanted to double down on fossil fuels, he said the government believed that “clean home-grown power that we control is the answer”.
Kemi Badenoch has renewed her call for taxes on energy bills to be cut.
On a visit to Hatzola ambulance station in Stamford Hill, north London, which was hit by an arson attack at the weekend, she was asked if she thought it would be fair for an energy support scheme to be targeted. (See 9.24am.)
She replied:
Well, what we see with targeted support is taxes on other people to pay for support to others. This is Labour’s playbook.
They keep raising taxes on everyone else to give benefits. There is a much better thing that they could do, which is to scrap the taxes on household energy bills.
These are the green taxes which Ed Miliband put on all our energy bills, both households and business and industry.
The live feed from the Lib Dem local elections campaign launch did not last long, and it did not include footage of Ed Davey taking questions from reporters. But this is what the Lib Dems are saying about their five key campaign issues.
-Cut the cost of living: A plan to halve energy bills within a decade, saving households an average of £870 a year
-Fix the NHS and care: Guarantee the right to see a GP within seven days (or 24 hours for urgent cases) and ending 12-hour A&E waits.
-Rescue high streets: Give an emergency cut to VAT for hospitality businesses, to bring prices down and boost struggling high streets.
-Clean up rivers: Ban water companies from dumping raw sewage into local rivers and coastal areas.
-Restore community policing: Ensure visible, effective local policing to reduce crime.
Davey uses the passage about Reform UK (see 9.36am), accusing them of being a party that does division. The Lib Dems are different, he says. “We don’t do division; we do potholes.”
Ed Davey launches Lib Dems' local elections campaign
The Liberal Democrat local elections campaign launch is running late. Ed Davey, the leader, has been posing for photographs. But he is now giving his speech.
He starts by saying Kemi Badenoch once dismissed the Lib Dems as the sort of people who fix the church roof. She meant it as a sneer, but Davey says he embraces this description.
Farage urged to sack Reform UK mayoral candidate who likened Jewish community group to 'Islamists on horseback'
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
Nigel Farage should sack a Reform UK mayoral candidate who described a Jewish community security group as ‘cosplayers’ and likened them to “Islamists on horseback,” the Liberal Democrats have said.
Chris Parry, who remains Reform’s mayoral candidate for Hampshire despite a previous controversy in which he said David Lammy should “go home” to the Caribbean, made the comments yesterday about Shomrim, a group of volunteers who safeguard communities including Orthodox Jewish families.
Parry, a retired rear admiral, also retweeted a post on X by Catherine Blaiklock, a co-founder of the Brexit party, hours after news of the attack on a Jewish charity ambulance service in north London emerged, in which she asked: “Can Christian’s [sic] in Britain set up their own police and patrol certain neighbourhoods?”
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson said the comments, some of which were later deleted, were ‘deeply insensitive’ about Jewish community. He went on:
Nigel Farage should act now to drop Chris Parry as Reform’s Hampshire mayoral candidate. These remarks were deeply insensitive, insulting and not befitting of someone who wants to hold public office.
At a time when we are all thinking of the Jewish community after such a disturbing attack, these comments will compound the pain so many people are already feeling.
Farage says Reform UK would repeal law intended to ban younger generations from ever being able to buy cigarettes
The tobacco and vapes bill, the legislation that will ensure that anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be allowed to legally by cigarettes, is due to finish its passage through parliament soon. MPs voted down anti-government Lords amendments to the bill last night and, when peers pass the final version of the bill, it will become law. It is essentially cross-party legislation, because the original version of the bill was proposed by Rishi Sunak when he was PM. Only 47 MPs voted against the Labour version when it had its second reading in November 24 – 35 Tories, 7 Lib Dems and 4 Reform UK MPs.
But Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, says that if he wins the election, he will get rid of it. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, he claims it will never work.
Ask yourself this. How is the ban meant to work? Ten years from now, a 27-year-old will not be legally able to buy cigarettes, but a 28-year-old will be able to. A decade later 37-year-olds will not be deemed old enough to smoke, but 38-year-olds will be free to do so. And so forth.
The onus will be on the poor shopkeeper to identify those old enough to make a legal purchase. If he fails to carry out his duty as some kind of health policeman, he will be fined £200. How will he ensure that his customers are entitled to make a purchase?
He also says he objects to it in principle.
Britain was once held to be a beacon of freedom in the world. Now, as I observed in the Commons, the puritanical spirit of Oliver Cromwell again stalks the land. Our bossy, ruling elite’s default response to something is moving to ban it.
People who speak out against the woke orthodoxy infecting public and now private institutions can expect to have their collars felt. Minority pursuits, such as trail hunting, will be consigned to the history books and anyone who seems to be having fun in a way not approved of by the high priests of the progressive cathedral turns into a target.
In his article, Farage quotes polling commissioned by the the Freedom Association which found that, “of those expressing a view, a majority thought that the ban was ‘unworkable’”. But other polling suggests there is strong public support for the measure.
In an article for the Observer at the weekend Sam Freedman argued that Reform UK’s support has been dropping in recent months because “its policy agenda is increasingly tailored to the true believers rather than the voters it really needs”. This latest announcement could turn out to be another example of this.
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Labour was wrong to block Burnham from being candidate in Gorton and Denton, Lisa Nandy says
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has criticised Labour’s decision not to allow Andy Burnham to stand as the candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection. In a long interview with the House magazine, she said:
I think it is right that members are allowed to make their own choices about who they want to be their candidates in elections – I’ve always thought that right. And while I respect the views of colleagues on the national executive committee, had I been sitting in that seat – is that what you’re asking me, what I would have voted? – yeah, I would have voted to allow him to stand, as Lucy [Powell] did.
Nandy said she understood the NEC’s argument that he should not be allowed to stand as a candidate because he is mayor of Greater Manchester and should serve out his time in office. But, she implied, respecting internal Labour democracy was more important.
[Labour members] deserve to be in the driving seat of their own lives, and it offends me when people are not, and I think that goes for our members as much as everybody else.
Ed Davey attacks Reform UK for wanting to copy 'Trump's nasty politics'
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, will present his party as an opponent of President Trump’s “nasty” politics when he launches his local elections campaign this morning.
In extracts from his speech released overnight, he attacks Reform UK in particular for being keen to copy Trump.
He says:
Some politicians would rather divide our communities than fix them. They’d rather point the finger of blame than get their hands dirty. They want to import Donald Trump’s nasty style of politics over here.
That’s not who we are. We’re different. We don’t do division. We do potholes and police officers, doctors’ appointments and cleaning up dirty rivers. We do the hard work that actually makes people’s lives better.
The Liberal Democrats will change our politics so we can fix the country we love. Every vote for the Liberal Democrats in May is a vote for a strong local champion who will bring our communities together and get the job done.
In a briefing note, the Lib Dems say:
Reform-led councils elected last year have mimicked the White House in dodging media scrutiny, with an unprecedented ban on local journalists in Nottingham. In Durham, they have scrapped renewables projects that would’ve saved taxpayers tens of thousands. Across the country, their Musk inspired Doge projects have failed to find savings, leading to Reform councils raising council tax despite promising to cut it.
Targeted energy support package 'most efficient use of public money', minister says
In his Times Radio interview Michael Shanks, the energy minister, confirmed that the government is more interested in a targeted energy bill support package (targeting those most in need) than a universal one (targeting everyone). (See 8.56am.) This would be “the most efficient use of public money”, he said.
He said:
Genuinely we are looking at every option. Clearly part of that is, is there a way to target support at people who need it most? I think most people would recognise that as the most efficient use of public money but we also want to make sure that we’re not missing people …
But, in honesty, we’re three weeks into this conflict, although people are really worried there’s no certainty of how this is going to end or when and so we are looking really carefully at what that longer term support needs to be.
Ministers rebuff trade body’s call to boost North Sea oil and gas production
The UK government has dismissed a warning from an energy trade body that failing to produce more homegrown North Sea oil and gas will leave the UK increasingly reliant on imports at a time of rising global instability, Jillian Ambrose reports.
No fuel shortage in Britain, says minister, as Reeves prepares to set out economic response to Iran war
Good morning. At lunchtime Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, will give a statement to MPs that will cover what the government is doing, and (more tentatively) might do, in response to the soaring global energy prices caused by the Iran war. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, also creating a global energy shortage, the Conservative government ended up spending £40bn supporting families and firms with energy bills over the following winter. Reeves’s problem is that she has not got £40bn spare. With spring upon us, and people starting to turn down their central heating, the issue may not seem particularly pressing in many households (although heating oil and petrol prices are already soaring.) But, by the end of this year, this could be the sort of colossal economic crisis that gets remembered for half a century.
As Chris Mason explains in a good preview, Reeves is expected to cover three points. She is expected to confirm that the government wants to give the Competition and Markets Authority new powers to deal with any potention profiteering by oil companies. She will confirm that the government wants to go “further and faster to secure the next generation of nuclear power and to reclaim Britain’s place as a leading nuclear nation” (as the Treasury puts it in its overnight preview).
And she is also set to set out some ideas about how the government might help households with energy bills if it thinks this is needed when the current energy price cap runs out at the end of June. What she won’t do is unveil a plan; it is too early for that. But Mason says she will “talk about the principles that will drive any further support to families if energy bills spiral in the coming months”, and she is expected to endorse the hints being dropped by Keir Starmer yesterday about any support package being targeted, not universal.
Michael Shanks, an energy minister, has been on the airwaves this morning taking questions ahead of Reeves’s statement, and he has stressed that there is no need for drivers to worry about a fuel shortage. He told Times Radio:
[Drivers] should do everything as absolutely normal because there is no shortage of fuel anywhere in the country at the moment. We monitor this every single day, I look at the numbers personally. There’s no issue at all with that …
People should go about their business as normal. That’s what the RAC and the AA have said. It’s really important people do that. There’s no shortage of fuel and everything is working as normal.
Asked if people should drive more slowly to conserve energy, Shanks replied:
Look genuinely, people shouldn’t change their behaviour or their habits in the slightest.
Ministers do believe there is no fuel shortage. But they are also saying this because they don’t want to say anything that might trigger panic buying.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
9.30am: Executives from X, Meta, TikTok and Google give evidence to the Commons science committee about misinformation on social media.
9.45am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, launches his party’s local elections campaign in West Surrey.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit meeting members of the Jewish community in Stamford Hill in north London.
11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, makes a statement to MPs about the economic response to the Iran war.
Afternoon: MPs debate a Tory opposition day debate calling for the windfall tax on energy companies to be abolished, and for the ban on new oil and gas licences for the North Sea to be lifted.
2.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, and Jenny Chapman, the development minister, give evidence to the Commons international development committee.
Afternoon: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is on a visit in Leeds where he is due to speak to the media.
And at some point today the business department is publishing a written ministerial statement giving an update on the goverment’s commitment to publish documents about how Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was appointed a trade envoy.
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