Alison McGovern
Main Page: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)Department Debates - View all Alison McGovern's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Mr Osborne
Last week we had the good news that unemployment had fallen again and employment had gone up, and we had the forecasts from the European Commission. Although we would of course want UK growth to be higher, they show that it is actually forecast to be higher than that of France, Germany and many of our European neighbours. We are in a tough neighbourhood—it is a tough economic situation—but we are confronting our country’s economic problems.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
The Chancellor’s response to the questions today has proved that, as ever with him, it is politics first before economics. Now that he has failed the test he set himself, will he turn his attention to the test that Wirral people set him, specifically on under-employment? What is he going to do to help people who cannot get the hours they need in work to put food on the table?
Mr Osborne
Of course we want to help people who are not currently working the hours that they want to work; we want to help them by helping businesses to expand to take on more people. As well as jobs going up by 888,000 in total and private sector jobs going up by 1 million or more, the number of hours worked in our economy has also gone up. Labour argues that it is all to do with under-employment, but that is not the case. Of course we want to help people who are working part time but want to go full time and people who want to work more hours. The best way to do that is to create an environment in which businesses want to expand and take people on.