LABOUR is calling for an emergency budget to bring forward measures to tackle the cost of living crisis as inflation soars to a 30-year high.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer appeared on yesterday’s Sunday Morning show on BBC TV to demand measures to deal with the crisis.
Labour has now outlined five policy demands for an emergency budget, including its ongoing call for the windfall tax on energy companies – saying they would use the money to cut household bills by up to £600 – and the cancelling of the recent National Insurance Tax rise.
The other measures Labour proposes are:
- A discount on business rates for small and medium sized businesses.
- A ‘rapid ramp-up’ of installing insulation into homes across the country to save on energy bills.
- An investigation by the National Crime Agency into taxpayer money lost through fraud.
Starmer said the rising cost of living is ‘the single number one issue’ for people across the UK.
‘They’re really struggling to pay their bills, and the response of the government in the Spring Statement was woeful,’ he said.
‘They’ve made a bad situation worse.
‘What we are calling for is an emergency budget to deal with the cost of living crisis.’
Starmer also told the BBC that he is calling for Tory MPs to move against Johnson and seek to remove him, saying: ‘Why are we talking about this? Answer: because the prime minister has broken the rules he made, and been fined by the police for doing it.
‘No prime minister in the history of our country has even been in that position before. So he’s brought this on himself.’
He added: ‘His moral authority, his authority to lead, is shot through and his own side have now had enough of defending him.
‘Johnson – along with his wife, and the Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak – have been fined by police for attending a birthday party thrown in his honour in the Cabinet Room in June 2020.
It is one of more than 50 fixed penalty notices handed out by the Metropolitan Police since it began its investigation into the law-breaking parties in Downing Street and across Whitehall.
It was the first time a sitting prime minister has been found to have broken the law.
Former Brexit Minister Steve Baker told the House of Commons ‘the gig is up’, and warned in a newspaper article that Partygate has been ‘a disaster’, adding: ‘I fear we will reap the whirlwind on polling day.’
Last Thursday, MPs voted for an investigation by a parliamentary committee to take place over whether Johnson misled Parliament over his statements on No 10 parties.
Johnson has denied that he has received a second Partygate fine, but leading Tories have contradicted this, saying that there have been further Met Police FPNs issued over the notorious ‘bring your own booze’ Downing Street party.