THE Government-backed energy company GB Energy is a gimmick that will prove to be a waste of taxpayers’ money, according to the Shadow Energy Secretary.
Claire Coutinho told GB News: “If you look at what Labour have done, they went into an election promising people they would save them £300 pounds off their energy bills.
“As soon as they came into government, not only did they stop talking about that completely, but one of their first acts was to take away up to £300 of support from 10 million pensioners this winter, not something they mentioned in the election campaign at all.
“So today, Ed Miliband’s got a bill that I'll be talking about and explaining why it's really important that we focus on cheap energy for the country and not on these pointless gimmicks which are just going to be a waste of taxpayer money.
“We've got similar institutions which can do the same things, but the thing that he's changed for GB Energy is any level of accountability.
“It gives them special powers to direct that money and there's no governance that's talked about in the bill whatsoever…it is a blank cheque. He's not told us how much it's going to save consumers.
“He doesn't talk about £300 pounds, and in the same breath, he says this is going to turn a profit for people in just five years’ time, whilst he's telling businesses that he's going to use it to take the most unprofitable parts of their investments, the bits that they don't want.
“What I would like to ask is why Ed Miliband, now Secretary of State, thinks that he can turn a profit on energy investments when multi-million pound energy companies, who are very experienced in these matters, think they can't.
“I mean, he's clearly not able to stack up the promises…and that's what I think we'll be talking about today, and I'm going to be asking him lots of questions.”
She added: “If the Labour government was talking about plans that were actually going to make people's energy cheaper, I would be there to support it. I want to be a constructive opposition. I don't want to just oppose for opposition's sake.
“But actually, all of these people have said that what they're going to do is raise bills for families in this country. That was something that I was completely against.
“It was the top priority for me when I was Energy Secretary to look at ways we could reduce bills, and whether that was what was going into the energy system, or making sure that we were looking at how energy suppliers were being regulated.
“They gave people fair deals, looking at how people get a fair price at the petrol pumps. My focus was trying to bring bills down and I'm worried, I'm really worried that what the Labour government is going to do is take bills in the wrong direction, which is just going to be misery for households and businesses in this country.”
