Shadow Transport Minister Louise Haigh chats to the Express & Star during her visit to Wolverhampton.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Mark Andrews from the Express Astanae.
00:05 Yes, I know it very well. John Spellar sends it round all the time.
00:10 I'm pleased to meet you. I'm in Wolverhampton, Queen's Square at the launch of Labour's campaign to announce its first steps for government.
00:20 I'm with the Shadow Transport Secretary, Louise Hay.
00:24 First of all, I'm just looking at the announcement you make.
00:33 First of all, Great British Energy says that will be publicly owned by windfall tax on oil and gas giants.
00:40 Does that mean there will be no public subsidy whatsoever for that?
00:44 Yes, we're expanding the windfall tax beyond where the government have set out their very limited steps.
00:49 We're backdating it further and we're filling in the many loopholes, including in tax relief and investment subsidy that they already deliver.
00:58 That will allow us to establish Great British Energy.
01:02 We've also set out plans to borrow to invest over a ten year period if we're given the opportunity of winning a decade of national renewal.
01:12 That will allow us to invest in hydrogen, offshore wind, onshore wind, solar right across the country in order to lower bills and secure our energy supply.
01:22 You didn't mention nuclear. Is nuclear not possible?
01:25 Nuclear, sorry, absolutely is. There's a South Yorkshire MP where we produce small modular reactors. It's really important.
01:31 Will this company be profit making?
01:33 It will be a challenger to the other energy companies.
01:37 Absolutely we would want it to make profit. It could then be reinvested and make sure that we could drive down consumers' energy bills.
01:43 The obvious question with that is if it's going to be profitable, where will you succeed whereas the commercial companies can't in making it work?
01:50 The issue at the moment is there has not been sufficient investment in renewable energy.
01:54 The Tories have had an effective ban on onshore wind for the last ten years and that has really reduced our energy security,
02:02 leaving us completely at the whim of foreign despots like Putin.
02:06 So this is a plan to secure our energy supply in this country, lower bills, and renewable energy we know is a lot cheaper than fossil fuels in the long run.
02:15 That's why we think GB Energy can be really successful.
02:18 You say it will provide cheaper energy. When will people see it in their bills now?
02:22 We have said we want to achieve all these promises within the first five years but we would expect to see movement very quickly.
02:29 So you would say in three years' time will people be seeing a difference on their bills?
02:34 We definitely want to see it delivered within the first term of a Labour government but we want to see progress very quickly.
02:39 In terms of the bills, the bills will be cheaper?
02:41 Yes, absolutely.
02:42 The two of these you have quantified, NHS waiting times, you want to cut them to 40,000 more appointments each week.
02:51 Now if you look at the numbers, 7.5 million appointments a week each, that's half a percent. Would that make a tangible difference to people?
02:59 I think for people that are waiting months at the moment, any progress is important.
03:05 We are setting out credible, immediate targets and plans that could reduce waiting lists.
03:11 We know it's going to take time to fix 14 years of austerity that have left our NHS in crisis.
03:17 These are immediate plans that we know we can set in place from day one that are fully funded and based on the existing NHS workforce.
03:25 So you believe that 40,000 more appointments, that's half a percent, would make a tangible difference to what NHS is?
03:31 I think adding 40,000 extra appointments a week straight away will make a really big difference.
03:35 But over time, obviously we want to start to reverse the massive decline that we've seen in the NHS.
03:40 But these are actions that we can take immediately, drawing on the existing workforce and using underused capacity in the private sector.
03:48 Okay, and a similar question regarding the 6,500 new teachers recruited and unbiased education tax breaks for private schools.
03:56 Again, there are 570,000 teachers in the UK at the moment, that's 1.1%.
04:03 All our work is out is one new teacher for every six schools. How much impact would that have on the average person?
04:10 Well, we know where the biggest problem at the moment is around specialist teachers and that's where we really want to focus recruitment.
04:17 So we don't have sufficient maths teachers or science teachers or language teachers.
04:21 And we know that teachers are simply not qualified to teach certain subjects, are routinely being drafted in and that's really undermining children's education.
04:28 So that's where we're going to focus this policy.
04:31 But of course, these are our immediate retail offers. We have much wider education policies that we know will make a real difference to children's lives.
04:39 Now, in our old offices we used to have a cleaner who used to come around and talk to her.
04:44 And she told me she starts work at four o'clock every morning at Sains, works eight hours and then comes to clean our office.
04:50 She's doing that to save up for school fees to send her daughter to a technical college.
04:54 What would you say to somebody like that who feels they're not going to have to, you know, they're doing that for, you know, an ordinary working person who's doing that.
05:01 And you're going to give five the opportunity of sending their children to a private school.
05:04 Well, we would want to see everyone given the option of going to a great local school.
05:08 And at the moment, like in our NHS and in our education system, people are faced with a two-tier system.
05:13 And because they don't feel for whatever reason like they can send their kids to the local state school, they're making those really, really tough choices.
05:21 We want people like that cleaner to save that money, send their children to state schools and have that money to spend on making their lives better in different ways.
05:28 Thank you very much.