‘Action Saturday’: Labour frontbenchers set to take cost of living plan to key seats

Labour members and shadow ministers are set to take the party’s plan to tackle the cost-of-living crisis directly to voters at more than 330 events across the country, including dozens of key battleground seats, on ‘Action Saturday’.

In a big campaign day taking place tomorrow, Labour activists will promote the “fully-costed and fully-funded” proposals put forward by the opposition party to lower energy costs and address the financial challenges facing voters.

Shadow cabinet members hitting the streets and knocking on doors to campaign in communities across the country on Saturday include:

• National campaign coordinator Shabana Mahmood and shadow Treasury minister Pat McFadden in Birmingham Erdington, where Labour has selected a new candidate for an upcoming by-election
• Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner in Ashton
• Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves joining Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed in Croydon
• Labour chair Anneliese Dodds in Swindon
• Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in Gedling
• Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Bournemouth and Southampton
• Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in Stevenage
• Shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Jim McMahon in Colne Valley
• Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth in Derby
• Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell in Bolton

It comes at a time when Boris Johnson’s premiership is engulfed in scandal. Labour has accused the Tories of being unable to focus on the everyday concerns and difficulties of voters because they are distracted by “chaos of their own making”.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor reportedly cancelled promised talks this week to discuss soaring energy bills – because Johnson needed instead to convince Conservative MPs not to call a vote of no confidence in him.

Labour is understood to have printed more than half a million leaflets setting out out how the party would focus on ensuring people’s energy bills are cheaper, amid Tory inaction amid a global squeeze on gas and energy supplies.

To help “struggling families and pensioners” with the rising cost of living, Labour has urged the government to remove VAT from household energy bills and to expand the warm home discount scheme.

The measures would “save nearly every household around £200, and up to £600 for those most in need of support”, according to the party. It would be funded by a windfall tax on oil and gas producers benefiting from bumper profits amid the energy crisis.

In a speech in Bury last week, Reeves criticised ministers for worrying “only about the political costs of their parties” while “ordinary people” face “prices rising at the supermarket and at the petrol pump, energy bills soaring and real wages falling”.

She also declared that the government had failed to plan ahead for the global spike in gas prices, which has left the country “uniquely exposed” and forced people to “shoulder the burden alone” – as well as deal with rising taxes.