The shadow minister for business and trade has slammed the decision by the government to close down UK oil and gas production.

Speaking to GB News, Harriett Baldwin said:

“This has been coming for a while and I think it’s really shocking to see how slow the government has been to address this issue. My colleague, Martin Vickers, who’s the local MP, has been raising it urgently in the House of Commons for some time, and yet the government seems to have not taken action.
“We all agree, which is why the legislation on Saturday passed unanimously, that it is a crucial part of our critical national infrastructure to keep blast furnaces and virgin steel production going in the UK.
“But what we are disappointed to see is that whenever this government negotiates, it seems like the country loses, and they haven’t been giving it enough sense of urgency in terms of this critical national infrastructure.
“[Energy prices are] a really important issue and as you’ve seen under new leadership of the Conservative Party, we’re addressing that and beginning to formulate the policies that will ensure that we do have those critical supplies.
“I’m very disappointed that this government has, for example, got rid of some of the new production of our oil and gas and I think there needs to be a rethink on this front.
“I also think that in terms of the costs that this government has put on, for example, steel production, but also business right across this country; the fact that they’ve increased national insurance on everyone, they’ve increased business rates on this plant at Scunthorpe.
“It just shows that they’re not backing business, that what we’ve got here is actually a government by the unions, of the unions and for the unions.
“I think she [Rachel Reeves] has been part of the problem and the Halloween budget last October has not helped businesses or growth across the UK.
“It would be good to see her rethink some of those tax hikes, because I think they’ve actually stalled growth and reduced the tax revenues in this country. One of the things that we do need to see is growth and unfortunately, this government’s gone about it completely the wrong way.
“We’re now in awful April when these tax rises are hitting businesses across the country.”
Discussing the ongoing situation in Birmingham, she said:
“It’s another really shocking example of when this government negotiates, it’s everyone else who pays. My understanding is that this is Unite the union holding Birmingham to ransom and the residents of Birmingham are now under a real risk to their health.
“It’s a really shocking example of how this government will not stand up to the unions, because the unions give them millions and millions of pounds of backing, which they continue to take.
“They really need to just take on these unions and find someone else to collect the bins in Birmingham.”