Labour says the publicly owned energy company it would create if it wins the general election would provide 46,000 new jobs across the East Midlands. The party has again denied that its plans would see the failure of Nottingham City Council's Robin Hood Energy repeated on a national scale, with Ed Miliband calling that argument "illiterate."
Mr Miliband, Labour's shadow energy secretary, was speaking during a visit to Ashfield ahead of the general election on July 4. The former Labour leader went to see staff at BRC Reinforcement, a steel reinforcement company based in Sutton, alongside Labour's candidate in Ashfield, Rhea Keehn.Labour used the visit as an opportunity to speak about its energy plans across the UK, chief among them being the establishment of Great British Energy.
"Robin Hood Energy was an energy supplier and it failed partly because of a failure of regulation and partly because the Conservatives left us totally exposed through fossil fuels. The Conservative position is, they're in favour of public ownership of energy, as long as it's foreign public ownership of energy.