Ed Miliband
Main Page: Ed Miliband (Labour - Doncaster North)Department Debates - View all Ed Miliband's debates with the Cabinet Office
(11 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The British economy is on the mend. We see unemployment coming down and the number of people in work going up, and our growth rate is now forecast to be almost three times as fast as the German growth rate. The Labour party and the Leader of the Opposition told us that we would lose a million jobs, but the Leader of the Opposition was absolutely wrong, and it is time that he got to his feet and told us that he was wrong.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
Having listened to the Select Committee hearing yesterday, will the Prime Minister tell us what is the difference between his—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say to the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary that his role is to nod his head in the appropriate places, and to fetch and carry notes? No noise is required.
Edward Miliband
Having listened to the Select Committee hearing yesterday, can the Prime Minister tell us what is the difference between his policy on energy and that of the energy companies?
The Prime Minister
Not a word of apology for predicting that a million jobs would be lost! The Opposition got it wrong, and they cannot bear to admit it. [Interruption.]
The Prime Minister
What we need in the energy market is more competition and lower levies and charges to drive profits and prices down, but what we have learnt in the last week is this: competition should include switching. At the Dispatch Box, the right hon. Gentleman said:
“I will tell the Prime Minister what is a con: telling people…that the answer was to switch suppliers”.—[Official Report, 23 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 295.]
However, what have we found out over the last few days? The right hon. Gentleman switched his supplier. Yes—he went for one of these insurgent companies to cut his bills. Is it not typical? The right hon. Gentleman comes here every week and attacks Tory policy; then he goes home and adopts Tory policy to help his own family.
Edward Miliband
The only thing that people need to do if they want someone to stand up against the energy companies is to switch the Prime Minister, and that is what they know.
Perhaps, as the unofficial spokesman for the energy companies, the Prime Minister can answer the question that they could not answer yesterday. Can he explain why, although wholesale prices have hardly moved since a year ago, retail prices are rising by about 10%?
The Prime Minister
Because we need both competition and rolling back the costs of charges. Switching is part of competition and the company the right hon. Gentleman switched to has this to say about his energy freeze. Let us listen to the people providing his energy:
“A policy like this is potentially…problematic for an independent provider…bluntly, it could put me under.”
That is the right hon. Gentleman’s policy: not listening to the people providing his energy, but having less choice, less competition, higher prices. It is the same old Labour.
Edward Miliband
The right hon. Gentleman had no answer to the question, and I will explain something quite simple to him: most energy companies do not want a price freeze and most consumers do. That is why the energy companies are against a price freeze. He is so on the side of the energy companies that we should call them the big seven: the Prime Minister and the big six energy companies. In Opposition, he said there was a problem in the relationship between wholesale and retail prices, and he went on to say, “The first thing you’ve got to do is give the regulator the teeth to order that those reductions are made and that is what we would do.” Why when it comes to the energy companies has he gone from Rambo to Bambi in four short years?
The Prime Minister
Who was it who gave us the big six? [Interruption.] Yes, when Labour first looked at this there were almost 20 companies, but, because of the right hon. Gentleman’s stewardship, we ended up with six players. The Opposition talk about a price freeze but down the Corridor they have been voting for a price rise. That is right: they voted for a decarbonisation target that everyone accepts would raise prices. If he wants a price freeze, why has he just voted for a price rise?
Edward Miliband
It is just so hard to keep up with this Prime Minister on green levies. This is what he was saying in January: believe it or not, he was boasting about the size of his green levies. He said—I kid you not: “ECO was many times the size of the scheme it replaced.” So when it comes to green, as short a time ago as January he was saying the bigger the better, and now he says the opposite. Here is the problem: on competition—[Interruption.] Here is the problem: he wants a review of energy policy, but that is exactly what the energy companies want—a long inquiry, kicking the problem into the long grass. How will a review that reports next summer help people pay their bills this winter?
The Prime Minister
We want a competition inquiry that starts straight away: that is our policy. On the point about voting for a price rise, the right hon. Gentleman has to answer, because this is what the former Labour energy spokesman Lord Donoughue said in the House of Lords. The right hon. Gentleman should listen to this because Lord Donoughue was their energy spokesman:
“I have never spoken against a Labour amendment in my 28 years in this House, but…I am troubled by the consequence…for ordinary people…The amendment will…raise the cost of living and is in conflict with a future price freeze.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 October 2013; Vol. 748, c. 1357-1359.]
That is it from Labour’s own policy spokesman in the past in the Lords. The fact is that the whole country can see that the right hon. Gentleman is a one-trick pony and he has run out of road.
Edward Miliband
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about what people are saying—[Interruption.] If he wants to talk about—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Members should try to recover some semblance of calm. It would be good for their health and beneficial for their well-being. They must try to grow up, even after the age of 60.
Edward Miliband
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about what people are saying, his own former Tory Environment Secretary, the man he put in charge of the Climate Change Committee, says his figures are false. That is what he says. Instead of having a review, the right hon. Gentleman has an opportunity to do something for the public next week. He has an Energy Bill going through Parliament. Instead of sitting on his hands, he could amend that Bill to institute a price freeze now. We will support a price freeze: why does he not act?
The Prime Minister
Because it is not a price freeze—it is a price con. The fact is that the right hon. Gentleman is hiding behind this economically illiterate policy because he cannot talk about the economy, because it is growing; he cannot talk about unemployment, because it is falling; and he cannot talk about the deficit, because it has come down. He has got nothing else to say. He is just a weak leader with no ideas.
Edward Miliband
I will tell you who is weak—it is this Prime Minister. He is too weak to stand up to the energy companies. Nothing less than a price freeze will do, because that is the only way we can deal with the energy companies overcharging. It is time he started acting like a Prime Minister and standing up for consumers, and stopped acting like a PR man for the energy companies.