LABOUR said its plan to address the cost of living crisis is essential to address inaction by a “zombie government”.

James Murray, shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said cost rises constitute an “urgent emergency” for the country.

He told GB News: “The plan that we’re setting out today is one of a scale that we believe is absolutely essential to get people through what can only be described as an emergency situation that everyone is facing over the winter.

“As Keir is setting out this morning, it’s a real national economic emergency, people are facing enormous increases in their bills and their energy bills and the cost of living impacts that will have on them and so what we’re setting out is a plan here to freeze the energy price cap to bring that real help to people over the winter whilst at the same time using that time to really accelerate the investment in insulation of homes across the country to make sure that we have a solution for the long run too.”

Mr Murray was commenting in an interview during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Rosie Wright on GB News and added: “If you look at the Government at the moment, we’ve got a zombie government in Number 10.

“We’ve got two conservative leadership candidates who haven’t got any plans of their own which will really match the scale of the economic emergency that we’re facing.

“What we’re saying is, here’s a plan. Here’s a fully costed, fully funded plan that will provide real help to people over the winter, and we’ll start putting that investment into insulation of homes across the country that’s needed for the long term.

“This is what’s really important about our plan is that it’s fully funded, fully costed. The Government could adopt it straightaway and implement it and it would bring help to people as people are really feeling at least anxiety and in many cases despair and fear at the price rises.”

Responding to a claim from the Institute of Fiscal Studies that Labour’s plan is “an illusion”, he said: “The Institute for Fiscal Studies are making the point that…if we bring down inflation in the short run, that helps with interest rates over the short run too.

“They’re also making the point rightly that we need a long term solution and that’s exactly what we’re saying as well, which is that if we put in place these emergency measures to keep down energy bills over winter, we would also want to see investment in renewables.

“The insulation in homes across the country improved in the way that I set out measures to keep inflation down in the medium and long run…

He added: “Going into next year, we’ll try and put us on a more stable footing in the long term.

There has to be a long term plan put in place, which is what we’re saying that should happen over the winter but right now, there is an urgent emergency which we need to respond to which the country needs to respond to in which people need help with when they’re facing energy bills going up by the astronomical amounts, which are forecast to later this year.”