Conor Sheehan

But the fact of the matter is, as others have pointed out, that this is caused essentially by Donald Trump's illegal war in the Middle East.

And unfortunately...

Well, I think the government needs to intervene before the number of people in energy arrears, you know, increases again and before more and more struggling households and families already essentially find themselves unable to pay for basic things like food and groceries.

I would and I would like to remind people that today is actually May Day and I think it's really important that we see leadership from the trade union movement here given that the significant pressure that workers are under and a key way to exacerbate that pressure is through pay increases so I can personally would fully support the trade union movement in their call in that regard.

Well, there would be some justification for government winding them down, but government aren't winding them down.

They're effectively ending them.

And the fact of the matter is, what you're talking about here is pushing...

16,000 Ukrainian refugees into an overheated rental market.

And that, in our view, puts them at risk of homelessness.

And it's going to make the rental market even hotter for all renters.

And the fact of the matter is, is that the war is still ongoing.

And while we are a militarily neutral country, we're not a politically neutral country.

And I and my colleagues in the Labour Party see this as our contribution towards, you know, our act of solidarity towards Ukraine and the Ukrainian cause.

So you think we should keep paying to keep these people in accommodation?

Well, I think certainly we shouldn't be ending it as soon as we are because you're talking about... Well, when should we end it?

Well, when there is a material change in the situation in Ukraine, it's still a live theatre of war.

There's still critical infrastructure being destroyed.

I met a man a couple of weeks ago from Mariupol and he can't go back there because one, it's the party he was in is under Russian occupation and two, it's actually been completely destroyed.

So we need to make sure that we don't do something that will lead to more people entering homelessness.

Well, I'm concerned about this, Clare, because basically under the rental room scheme, and it's envisaged that if these units are allowed to be rented out, that the tenant would be treated as such under the rental room scheme, which means the tenant is treated as a licensee, which means you have fewer rights as tenants.