GB News host Stephen Dixon has shut down a Labour MP for laying the blame on the Tories for Britain’s energy crisis, declaring they had “no plan” for the future.
Appearing on the People’s Channel, Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Michael Shanks took aim at the opposition for “presiding over a decline in the North Sea”.
Mr Shanks told GB News: “The Tories had no plan for what the future of that would look like when they were in Government.”
Interrupting the Labour MP, Stephen hit back at his remarks and argued it “doesn’t matter” whether the Conservatives had a plan or not.
He told Mr Shanks: “It doesn’t matter! They’re not in Government now, are they? They’re not in power now, you are.
“And those in charge of organising this sort of thing say you could have these fields up and running with new licensing by the autumn?”
Disagreeing with Stephen, the Labour minister argued that extracting from the North Sea will “not take a penny” off of energy bills.
He responded: “The lesson from this current crisis is not to double down on fossil fuels, because even if it comes from the North Sea, it doesn’t take a penny off bills.
Stephen Dixon shut down Labour MP Michael Shanks after blaming the Tories for the UK’s energy crisis
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GB NEWS
“And so it’s a disingenuous position from a party that didn’t learn from the last fossil fuel crisis, when Russia invaded Ukraine and were all still facing the affordability costs that come from that. So the lesson you do learn from this is how do you protect households?”
Assuring Britons that the Labour Government “will reduce the cost of energy bills”, he added: “We’ve done that by the price cap coming on April 1, that will bring down bills regardless of what’s going on in the Middle East, that is protected.
“But it’s also about how we move faster away from fossil fuels, so we don’t get into the cycle of crisis somewhere in the world, driving up prices and ordinary working people of this country paying the price for it, which is what’s happened so often in the past few decades.”
Stephen then highlighted the Conservative argument that opening up the North Sea will create “£25billion in tax revenues and also provide energy security”.
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GETTYMr Shanks disagreed again, telling GB News: “This is also the Tory party that says right now, when there is a windfall and profits, there shouldn’t be a windfall tax. So I’m not quite sure I would trust their mathematics on any of this.
“And of course, they were the Government that presided over 70,000 jobs lost in the oil and gas industry, so there’s really very few lessons we can take from the Tories on any of this.”
He made clear: “But look, our energy policy is very clear, we’ll do everything we can to protect households now.
“That’s why the price cap will bring down bills on the first of April, because of the decisions we took.
“But we’re also going to move further and faster to build nuclear and clean power technologies that get us off fossil fuels as fast as possible to protect households long into the future.”
Mr Shanks told GB News that the Labour Government is moving ‘further and faster’ to cut energy bill prices
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GB NEWS
Quizzing Mr Shanks on Labour’s defence spending, host Ellie Costello pressed him on when Britons can expect an increase to three per cent, amid the Middle East conflict.
Mr Shanks said: “We do need to increase spending, and that’s what we’ve agreed to do in the budget and in the spending review period, to increase to three per cent of defence spending.
“We did inherit the defence of the country in a real mess, not just the financing of it, but the organisation of our armed forces, and a recruitment crisis as well.
“We’re turning all of that around to make sure that we’ve got our armed forces and is fighting fit as much as they possibly can be.
“We’re doing all that work really quickly, and that’s exactly why the Prime Minister said at the committee yesterday.”