Bulwell MP demands contenders to be PM focus on helping people with cost of living crisis

Mr Norris was speaking to Sky News and reacting to claims by Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake, who backs Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership race, who says Mrs Truss’ plans for cutting taxes will not help the worst off households and without targeted support through the winter, people could end up homeless.

He demanded Parliament be recalled to debate and discus Labour’s proposals for tackling the crisis which he says will start helping struggling families and households immediately.

Labour’s plans include freezing the imminent rise in the energy price cap and further taxing the huge profits of energy giants.

Mrs Truss has said further taxing energy firms ‘sends out the wrong message’ and that the Government should be encouraging big energy firms to ‘invest in Britain’ instead.

She has also called Labour’s plans to freeze the energy cap ‘a sticking plaster’ and hinted at offering new cost of living support to families.

Meanwhile Mr Sunak has said he is prepared to find up to £10 billion to cut bills for poorer households.

Mr Norris said: “It’s a reflection of the Tory party with hopeless divisions, neither of which flank think the other is much good so I don’t think the rest of us should think either of them are any good.

"What’s really frightening for me is that, at a time when families are really struggling and people up and down the country are really concerned, the conversations being had in the leadership contests don’t seem to reflect that challenge that people are facing."

When asked what Labour would do instead, Mr Norris said: “We’ve been very clear, Sir Keir Starmer (Labour leader) spoke last week about freezing the energy price cap, instantly giving families security over their budgeting between now and the the new year.

"We have also announced proposals to insulate 1.9 million homes, which would help them start to get bills down and also create jobs in that sector which would help those families too.

"These are practical, fully-costed solutions that would help meet the immediate and medium-term challenges that we face.

"As a party, we will meet the cost of this by firstly closing the loopholes in the windfall tax after we called for it, you can backdate it to when we did that, which was in January this year.

"There’s £14 billion of allocated support that could be targeted at this already in the Budget and the beauty of Labour’s plans, we’re all concerned with inflation at the moment, our plans would reduce inflation and save us £7 billion of Government borrowing that could go into this.

"I think it’s right that people want to see our leaders with ideas of actions to take but also that they’re clear that they’re not just chucking money around and making unfunded commitments.

"Our plan is properly funded, it’s practical, we can get on with it now and we should be recalling Parliament to get on with this now and meeting the moment that faces us.”