COVENTRY South MP Zarah Sultana outlined alternative plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis during the Parliamentary debate on the Government’s Queen’s Speech.
Ms Sultana slammed the proposals claiming they did nothing to help struggling households, before proposing an amendment setting out five policies which she felt would help try and solve the cost-of-living crisis.
They included a windfall tax on oil giants to cut energy bills and a significant rise in the national minimum wage.
The amendment also outlined a real-terms increase in social security payments and pensions.
The proposed changes would be paid for by raising taxes on the richest with 5 per cent added to the largest earners and larger corporations.
Ms Sultana pointed out the record profits at oil giants BP and Shell, alongside ever-increasing bankers’ bonuses.
She said: “While the majority are struggling like never before, the wealthy few are raking it in.”
She also aimed at Conservative MPs, claiming political choices made by the Government, not ordinary people, were to blame for the cost-of-living crisis.
She referenced Lee Anderson’s comments that food banks were ‘were largely unnecessary because the main cause of food poverty was people not being able to cook and budget properly’ and Rachel Maclean’s statement that some British people could ‘find better-paid jobs’ to ease the cost-of-living crisis.
She concluded her speech by calling on MPs to ‘squeeze the profits of the rich, not the livelihoods of the people’.
