Claire Coutinho warns Labour making Britain ‘reliant on foreign dictators’ with ‘clearly mad’ policies

“If you look at Labour's policies, they want to ban North Sea oil and gas licences,” Ms Coutinho began.

“They're continuing to have carbon taxes on refineries, which are driving them out of existence.

“All of those things are making our struggles worse,” she stressed.

To make matters worse, the Shadow Energy Secretary said the decisions were “making us more reliant on foreign dictators”.

“We're going to be relying on Putin for his oil,” she added. “We're going to rely on China for coal-powered manufacturing and on India for jet fuel and diesel.”

Last week, it was announced that the Government would reduce sanctions on Russian diesel and jet fuel imported into Britain, so long as the crude oil was refined elsewhere.

The move, undoing work to pile financial pressure on Vladimir Putin, was prompted by fears of fuel shortages in the wake of the Iran war.

“None of those things adds up to a successful country... Whether it's petrol, jet fuel, or diesel, we are starting to feel the effects of not being able to produce things in our own country,” Ms Coutinho stressed.

She described policies, such as increasing taxes on petrol, as “clearly mad”.

However, GB News Breakfast host Ellie Costello was keen to challenge the Shadow Energy Secretary on her party’s previous policies in Government.

“I'm a little bit puzzled because you're here to talk to us about the Conservative Party pledging to reverse the net zero ban on air conditioning in new homes, which would be very welcome for people, especially in this heat wave that we're experiencing at the moment.

“But this is a ban that was brought in by the then Conservative Housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, back in 2021. So, are you admitting that this is a Conservative Government failure?”

“I wasn't in Government then,” Ms Coutinho responded, but she added that she was now focused on looking at “where the Conservatives got things wrong”.

“We've had this very miserabilist approach to energy, which says that using energy is somehow a bad thing,” she said.

“That's why you have this ban on air conditioning, which came in in 2021, because the idea was that it used too much energy.

“That's why you've only got 3 per cent of British homes have air con, compared to something like 90 per cent for Japan, Korea and the US.

“You don't have high-growth countries which have low energy usage,” she stressed.

“We have to completely fix our mindset when it comes to energy.

“We need to make sure that energy is cheap, abundant and reliable, and we have to allow people to use it,” the Shadow Energy Secretary said.