THIS is how the Bradford district's MPs voted yesterday on proposals to cut VAT on household energy bills to mitigate the looming cost of living crisis.

Conservative MPs Philip Davies, for Shipley, and Robbie Moore, for Keighley, both opposed the bill proposed by the Labour Party as part of Opposition Day in the House of Commons.

The city's Labour MPs, Bradford East, West and South’s Imran Hussain, Naz Shah and Judith Cummins all voted for the cut to VAT, as did Batley and Spen’s Kim Leadbeater, Leeds North West’s Alex Sobel and Halifax’s Holly Lynch.

Other local Conservative MPs Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) and Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) also voted against the motion to cut taxes, toeing their party's line.

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Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves put forward the motion in the House of Commons yesterday.

She said: “Prices are rising, bills are soaring, inflation is at its highest level for three decades and the growing cost-of-living crisis is leaving families across our country worse off.

“People deserve security, prosperity and respect, but what does the Chancellor give them? The highest tax burden in 70 years and no action on rising costs.

“The Chancellor’s national insurance rise is a tax on jobs, it is unfair and it is yet another broken promise.

“The Conservatives are becoming the high-tax, high-inflation party because they have become a low-growth party. They can take a straightforward step to show they want to start breaking us out of that cycle.

“Voting for Labour’s motion would allow us to bring forward legislation to cut VAT on household energy bills from five per cent to zero per cent for one year, and it would reserve parliamentary time on February 1 to do just that.”

Responding during the debate, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke said Labour had only brought the motion “to seize control of parliamentary business, which we cannot and will not accept”.

He said the Government has already taken steps to ease pressure on household finances and the “reality is the higher inflation we have seen is primarily due to global factors relating, to a large degree, to the fallout from the pandemic and a global spike in energy costs”.

Speaking in the debate, Kim Leadbeater said the Government “simply do not understand the reality or scale of this problem and just how many people are truly fearful of the impact of the cost-of-living crisis that is coming down the line”.

She said she has seen people in Batley and Spen who “are hard-working people, often both partners working full time, facing the humiliation of relying on food banks” due to the hardship they are already facing.

Naz Shah also spoke, saying her constituents are having to choose between “heating and eating” due to pressures on finances, and said: “The Prime Minister and his Government are in complete denial and empty of any solution to this crisis, probably because the cost of living crisis does not affect him.”

She called the Government “totally out of touch with real families” and said they are “failing every child and person in Bradford West” by not supporting the VAT cut.

Labour lost the vote by 229 votes to 319.