“The war didn’t ban onshore wind. The war didn’t scrap our home insulation scheme. The war didn’t run down our gas storage facilities. They did.”
The Institute for Fiscal Studies tweeted that real disposable household income is undergoing its largest fall “in living memory”, set to drop by 3.7 per cent this financial year, and an extra 2 per cent next year.
“Of course more money in the system is obviously a good thing,” Starmer said, responding to Hunt’s promise to provide up to 30 hours a week of free childcare for children as young as nine months, instead of three and four-year-olds under the current policy.
But he questioned when, and how, the party in power will implement the new policy.
“We’ve seen the Tories expand so-called free hours before. And as parents up and down the country know, there’s no point in free hours if you can’t access them.”
Speaking about energy costs, Starmer said that even with the price guarantee, the average energy bill has "doubled in 18 months".
Hunt extended energy bill support to households for another three months, freezing it at £2,500 a month, but Starmer said there was still “no real ambition on the clean energy that will give us cheaper bills”.
Starmer ended his speech punctuated once more by cries from the chamber: "A country set on a path of managed decline, falling behind our competitors, the sick man of Europe once again.”
