Mel Stride tears into Labour for 'toying with' food price cap plans: 'Absurd!'

Sir Mel Stride has launched a scathing attack on Chancellor Rachel Reeves over the now scrapped plans to implement price caps on essential foods.

Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Chancellor hit out at the Labour Government for "toying" with Britons over the plan.

Reacting to the Government's sudden shift on the plan following criticism from the Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mel declared he "totally agrees" with the Governor's verdict.

He told GB News: "They seem to have shifted their position a bit on this as the absurdity of this position has been more exposed, and I totally agree with the Governor of the Bank of England.

"At the end of the day, if you step in as the man or woman from Whitehall and say, I'm going to tell you what the price of eggs and fish and bread should milk should be, that just doesn't work."

Sir Mel warned that such a plan would have placed further "pressure on businesses" and caused "shortages on shelves" for shoppers.

He explained: "The way in which it doesn't work is you end up with shortages on the shelves if you artificially depress the price of things.

"And you also put a lot of pressure on businesses that are producing those goods, right down through the supply chain to the farm gate.

"So it's an absurd sort of thing to have toyed with originally, and not the way to go about easing pressure on people."

Asked for his verdict on Labour's newly announced "Great British Summer Savings Scheme", the Shadow Chancellor welcomed the move, but made clear it will only "ease pressure slightly" for Britons.

He told GB News: "If the price of anything comes down through lower tariffs or taxes or whatever, then that will ease things very, very, very slightly.

"But to the extent that people are going to be benefiting from slightly cheaper chocolate bars, dried fruit or peanuts, I think is a is a fairly debatable point."

Sir Mel criticised the current position of the economy under Labour, arguing that the country is in a "weaker position now to lean into the challenges" caused in part by the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict.

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He said: "The fundamentals here are that we've got our economy in a position where we've had low growth, very high taxes, which is causing people to have to tighten their belts, high and rising unemployment and high inflation across the period that this Government's been in office.

"Their policies have fed into all those problems, and that's why we're in a weaker position now to lean into the challenges of higher oil and gas prices due to the Middle East conflict than we would otherwise have been."

Questioned on the Government's decision to loosen Russian oil sanctions, Sir Mel hit out at Labour and declared it is the "completely wrong decision".

He said: "The Government should be doing responsible things to get pressure off people in terms of their cost of living, there's no doubt about that.

"But it is about choices, and I would argue very strongly that taking a choice to import fire third parties Russian oil, which feeds the Russian war machine and ends up enhancing their ability to kill Ukrainian citizens and Ukrainian soldiers is entirely the wrong decision. It's a disgraceful decision."

The Shadow Chancellor suggested that the Government should adopt a policy similar to the Tories' cheap power plan.

He concluded: "What they should be doing is things like our cheap power plan, where we are saying you take the carbon taxes and these green subsidies off people's electricity bills.

"You can get those bills down by about 20 per cent by doing that. Not just for households up and down the country, but also for businesses too.

"And what an absurd situation where we're saying that we're happy to pay for Putin's oil, but we're not happy to actually extract oil and gas from the North Sea, which are our own resources."