Lee Anderson has provoked fury after making light of the perilous situation facing many families across the UK.
The new deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, commonly known as ’30p Lee’ following comments made in relation to food bank users, said “simple biology” dictates that he’d choose heating over eating if push came to shove.
Despite the UK being one of the world’s wealthiest countries, millions of people are being forced to skip meals because they couldn’t afford food or sit freezing at home because they are too scared to switch the heating on.
Energy bills have soared to unaffordable levels, while record-breaking, double-digit inflation has led to food costs rising at a rate of knots, all while UK workers suffer the impact of what is estimated to be the longest pay squeeze in 200 years.
A report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation charity this month found more than seven million people found it was not even a choice as they could not afford to do either properly.
In an interview last week with Lois Perry, director of climate sceptic group Car26, Anderson was asked: “Heat or eat?”
“It’s got be heat,” he said. “You can live longer without food than you can without heat — it’s just simple biology.”
In the interview, Anderson also said the government’s target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 was “not a vote winner”.
Anderson said while he was “not a denier” climate change was a “world problem” which “needs a world solution”.
“You could turn all these cameras off, shut down England and we could all move back in caves tomorrow morning and it won’t make an iota of a difference to the planet,” he said.
Anderson also said it was “quite likely” the civil service was blocking the UK becoming energy independent as many officials started their careers under the previous Labour government.
“The civil service for me is one of the biggest problems in the country,” he said.
Related: Farming group warns of looming food crisis for UK – thanks to ‘Brexit red tape’
