James Murray

While I agree with the right hon. Gentleman drawing attention to the importance of food security as part of our national security, he and I take a different approach to energy security. The reforms that we are implementing as a Government, including through investment in home-grown, independent sources of energy to increase our energy security and make us more independent from fossil fuel prices around the world, are crucial to bringing bills down over time and ensuring greater energy independence and energy security. That is what the Government are doing, and that is how we see ourselves responding to one of the greatest pressures that many households and businesses face: the immediate and long-term costs of energy. I was talking about employers recognising the importance of fiscal discipline in their own businesses, just as the Government recognise the importance of fiscal discipline for the country. We know that this Government inherited a crisis in our public services, our public finances and the cost of living. NHS waiting lists were at record levels, children worked in portacabins as school roofs crumbled, and rivers were filled with polluted waste. Billions of pounds of spending commitments had not been funded or even properly disclosed to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Faced with that reality, any responsible Government would have to act. We kept our manifesto commitment to working people not to increase their income tax, their national insurance or VAT, and we went further by freezing fuel duty and raising the national minimum wage.