LABOUR’S shadow chancellor visited Reading and shared concerns about the cost-of-living crisis and its effects on both small businesses and families.
“People are having to make impossible decisions about heating and eating,” said Rachel Reeves.
“For people on ordinary incomes, they thought they were doing just fine but the little things that make life enjoyable – such as coming to pubs like The Forrester’s Arms, having a drink with your partner, going out for Sunday lunch or dinner, buying birthday presents and things like that – these are luxuries that a lot of people just can’t afford.
“These are people who thought they were doing just fine.”
The reason, she said, was due to the rising costs facing the nation.
“I haven’t experienced inflation like this in my lifetime, most people haven’t,” she said. “We haven’t had inflation like this since the 1970s, so it is really worrying.
“The essentials are going up … 9.4% is a headline, but look at energy prices, they went up 54% on average in April. Food prices are expected to go up 15% by the autumn.
“And anyone who fills their car with petrol or diesel knows what’s happening at the pump.”
She continued: “All these things that we have to do – fill up the car to get to work, put food on the table, and keep our houses warm and lot, those prices are just going through the roof. It’s putting huge pressure on family finances.”
Ms Reeves was speaking in the pub garden of The Forresters Arms in Brunswick Street on Thursday, July 21, after meeting with the team behind the bar.
Rising costs are impacting on small businesses, with increases on drink, food and energy bills.
“Small businesses don’t have the price of electricity and gas capped,” Ms Reeves continued adding they are also paying more in tax.
“In the two years Rishi Sunak was chancellor, he’s put up taxes 15 times.
“We’re the only major economy that has been increasing taxes on working people in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and it doesn’t make any economic sense to do that.
“It’s taking money out of people’s purses and wallets when they are already struggling with rising prices. It’s one of the things that are holding our economy back.”
In any forthcoming general election, Reading West is a key target seat for Labour. With Alok Sharma’s majority reduced in 2019, the party is hoping residents will give the party the benefit of the doubt.
Given the leadership election going on, the nation will soon have its fourth prime minister since 2016. Ms Reeves is hoping that there will be a fifth, a Labour one, within two years.
“I’ve been an MP for just over 12 years, they’ve all been spent in opposition. People have turned away from Labour in the last few years, and we need to persuade them to vote Labour again because nothing that I want to achieve can be done from opposition,” she said.
For the full interview with Ms Reeves, don’t miss the Wednesday, July 27 print edition of Reading Today, on sale in all good newsagents across the town.
