Labour: More protection for those impacted by interest hikes
Jonathan Reynolds says that Labour wants to see more protection for people directly impacted by changes to interest rates, as the Bank of England are anticipated to increase rates for the fourteenth month in a row. The Shadow Business Secretary says that the wider job of the government should be to assess “why are we in the UK such an outlier now on inflation, compared to the US and the eurozone.” Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 there are two parts to what the government should be doing that we want to see. First of all,
00:04 there's support for people directly affected by these decisions, so whether that is mortgage owners
00:09 who we would like to see them be able to switch between interest only and debt repayment mortgages
00:13 at their choice and switch back when they want to. People should be able to extend their terms
00:18 if they need to as well and also more protection for renters. Many renters will be in a position
00:23 where the increased costs for their landlord will see their rent go up, we would ban no-fault
00:27 evictions and have much longer notice periods in place, so that's specifically about the impact on
00:31 the housing market. The wider job of government should be to address why are we in the UK such an
00:37 outlier now on inflation compared to the US and the eurozone, why are we being so exposed to these
00:43 pressures and what can we do differently in future. So three specific things that we would
00:46 like to see, first of all, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, that is the exposure to the price
00:52 of natural gas, particularly in terms of how that sets the electricity price in the UK. There's been
00:56 such a problem, such a problem in this crisis, we want to see obviously that green sprint to a more
01:02 net zero electricity system. In future the government have gone in the other direction
01:05 with more oil and gas licences. Secondly, we've got to have more workers in the British economy,
01:10 now that means first of all tackling NHS waiting lists where we've now got 8 million people waiting
01:15 for treatment, many of those would be in the labour market if they could get the treatment they need.
01:20 And finally I would say if you look at things like our trade agreement with the European Union,
01:23 we've got a set of checks in place on things like food and agricultural products which we don't need
01:28 to have, we've got the same standards in place, we didn't get an agreement which covers that sector,
01:32 we would like to see that agreement cover that. So you're reducing the bureaucracy,
01:36 food prices in particular I think have been such a source of pain for people. So it's not just about
01:41 whether the bank of England should make the decision it may need to make today, it's about
01:45 how the economy is resilient, it's prosperous, how the government are taking the action that
01:49 they can take which is within their chance to do so, to make sure the economy works better for people overall.