Caroline Flint, left, with Jo McCarron
Caroline Flint, Labour’s Shadow Energy Secretary, joined Jo McCarron, Labour’s newly selected Parliamentary candidate for Kingswood, at Asda in Longwell Green tonight for an informal roundtable discussion in the café with local residents to hear their experiences, ideas, and to share Labour’s plans to reform the energy market.
Labour leader Ed Miliband and Ms Flint recently revealed Labour’s plan for the biggest reform of Britain’s electricity and gas market since the privatisation of the 1980s.
The Energy Green Paper sets out the steps a One Nation Labour government will take while resetting the market during a 20-month price freeze to ensure energy is affordable and available for the long term. The plans include a new regulator as Labour considers Ofgem has failed to get tough with the energy giants.
More Labour big names are expected to come to the constituency in the months ahead as the party fights to regain the marginal seat of Kingswood which Conservative Chris Skidmore won in 2010, ousting Roger Berry, who had been the Labour MP for 18 years.
Asked what she thought of Mr Skidmore’s record in Kingswood, Ms McCarron said tonight : “He is good at portraying himself as a community man and diverting the attention of the public but he has some very right-wing policies. He is a Conservative policy-maker.
“I am itching for a fight and to return a Labour Britain.”
