Clive Lewis appointed as shadow business and energy secretary

Clive Lewis has been appointed as Labour's new shadow business and energy secretary as part of Jeremy Corbyn's first reshuffle since being re-elected as party leader.


The MP for Norwich was voted into to parliament in the 2015 election and was appointed as a shadow energy and climate change minister last September when Corbyn first took up the leadership. He had been serving as shadow defence secretary since June.

Lewis has previously criticised the current energy system as being a “monopolistic model” reliant on “privatised profits and socialised costs”.

In an article for the Co-operative Party website in November 2015 he wrote: “Britain’s 20th century experiment with an energy system dominated by a handful of big centralised energy giants is failing on all fronts – plunging millions of us into a cold, unreliable energy future that is destroying the planet.”

In line with current Labour policy, he described community energy as an “exciting grassroots antidote” to the failures of the big six, and chastised former chancellor George Osborne for trying to destroy it by scrapping tax breaks that benefitted community energy schemes.

Barry Gardiner has been appointed as a shadow energy minister under Lewis. Up until the reshuffle he was still serving as the shadow energy and climate change secretary despite the Department of Energy and Climate Change being scrapped and folded into a revamped business department almost three months ago.

Speaking at the Labour party conference in Liverpool last month, Gardiner announced that the party will force suppliers to put consumers on their cheapest tariffs and introduce a complete ban on fracking, if they win the next general election.

Tom Grimwood

This article first appeared on edie’s sister title, Utility Week

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