The Shadow Minister for Business and Trade has slammed the decision by the Government to close down UK oil and gas production, claiming Labour is a Government "run by the unions".Speaking to GB News, Harriet Baldwin expressed her disappointment with the move and called for a "rethink" by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Can we start with British Steel, obviously a historic sitting on Saturday, but this crisis was a long time coming, wasn't it?
00:07The previous government was warned about this, energy prices have been high for a long time.
00:12What's the long-term future for steelmaking in the UK?
00:18Well, absolutely, you're right, this has been coming for a while and I think it's really shocking to see how slow the government has been to address this issue.
00:27My colleague Martin Vickers, who's the local MP, has been raising it urgently in the House of Commons for some time and yet the government seems to have not taken action.
00:37They haven't really prioritised these negotiations and now we're in a situation which is obviously very challenging.
00:45Of course, we all agree, which is why the legislation on Saturday passed unanimously, that it is a crucial part of our critical national infrastructure to keep blast furnaces and virgin steel production going in the UK.
01:00But what we are disappointed to see is that, you know, whenever this government negotiates, it seems like the country loses and they haven't been giving it enough sense of urgency in terms of this critical national infrastructure.
01:13There seems to be a direct conflict, though, between net zero policies over the last decade and the future of British steel.
01:21And one of the biggest problems for the British steel industry has been the huge prices of industrial energy, far higher in this country, obviously than in places like China and Turkey, but also amongst our direct competitors like France and Spain.
01:35And yet neither the last government nor this government have done or said anything to suggest that they will be subsidising energy or reducing energy taxes or doing something to make the future of British steel sustainable.
01:49Well, I think you're spot on. It's a really important issue.
01:52And as you've seen under new leadership of the Conservative Party, we're addressing that and beginning to formulate the policies that will ensure that we do have those critical supplies.
02:04I'm very disappointed that this government has, for example, got rid of some of the new production of our oil and gas.
02:11And so I think there does need to be a rethink on this front.
02:14I also think that in terms of the costs that this government has put on, for example, steel production, but also business right across this country, the fact that they've increased national insurance on everyone, they've increased business rates on this plant at Scunthorpe.
02:29You know, it just shows that they're not backing business, that what we've got here is actually a government, you know, by the unions, of the unions and for the unions.
02:37Do you think, Harriet, given the inevitable very high cost to the taxpayer of bailing out Jing Ye, either in the short or long term, we don't know yet.
02:47Do you think that will mean that Rachel Reeves has to come back for more tax rises, more public spending cuts in order to keep her fiscal rules?
02:55Is that what you would advise her to do? Are there any other options?
02:58Well, I think she has been part of the problem and her budget, the Halloween budget last October, has not helped businesses or growth across the UK.
03:11And it would be good to see her rethink some of those tax hikes because I think they've actually stalled growth and reduced the tax revenues in this country.
03:19So I think one of the things that we do need to see, as we all agree on, is growth.
03:25And unfortunately, this government has gone about it completely the wrong way.
03:28And we're now in awful April when these tax rises are hitting businesses across the country.