Economic Growth

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I will give way to whichever Labour MP can answer this question: do the Labour party rule out an in/out referendum on Europe?

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is six months to the day since the voters of Corby in east Northamptonshire delivered a damning verdict on the Government. The key issues in that by-election were not the preoccupations of the right wingers in the Chancellor’s Tory party, but jobs and health care in this country. But since the Chancellor is so keen to ask us questions, will he answer the question that the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) answered very clearly, which is: if there were an in/out referendum tomorrow, how would the Chancellor vote?

[Mr Osborne]

The policy is this: change the European Union, seek a new settlement, then put that to the British people in a referendum. This debate has revealed that Labour cannot answer the simple question: does it rule out offering an in/out referendum before the next general election? If it cannot answer that question, it will not be listened to on this subject any more, and people will be very, very clear that the only way to get an in/out referendum on Europe is to have a Conservative Government after the next election, so people should vote Conservative in that election and make sure that they have their say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, albeit briefly. It is six months today since I was elected as the Member of Parliament for Corby in east Northamptonshire, which is an incredible honour. Fresh from those doorsteps, I can say that the people in my constituency told me that they wanted action on our economy and action to protect our vital local services. It is to address those areas of policy that they elected me to be their representative, and it is against those priorities that I have considered the Queen’s Speech.

Since the day I was elected six months ago, 324 more people in my constituency have been made unemployed. Sadly, the Chancellor has ignored the message that he was sent by my constituents. He continues to ignore the impact of his policies on my constituents. When this Government took office, 2,009 people were unemployed in my constituency. That was far too many people, but of course we were coming out of a global economic recession. The figure now stands at 2,852. Youth unemployment, which we know rose after the global economic recession—it was far too high and we were doing everything we could to reduce it, with programmes such as the future jobs fund—stood at 590 in my constituency when this Government took office. The figure is now 770. One more person in my constituency has become unemployed each day in the time that this Chancellor and this Prime Minister have been in office.

We have heard what keeps the people at the heart of this Government awake at night: they lie awake worrying about how to pay the school fees. Even if the coalition parties do not care about the tragedy of unemployment for the people who are out of work and their families in my constituency and in other constituencies, perhaps they could be encouraged to see the economic folly of their policies. This Government are spending £21 billion more on keeping people out of work, rather than introducing policies that help people to get back into work. I wish that instead of lying awake at night worrying about the school fees or the latest factions in the Eurosceptic right, they worried about the young unemployed people and the 2,800 people who are out of work and desperately looking for work in my constituency. I wish the Government would stop stigmatising those people and calling them shirkers, when I know how hard each and every one of them I meet and speak to on the doorsteps or in my surgeries is looking for work.

After three years, this Government have no answers. They have nothing to say. I wanted to see a jobs Bill that would put in place a compulsory jobs guarantee, a finance Bill to kick-start our economy and a consumers Bill. I also wanted to see measures to deal with the housing market. In particular, had I had more time today, I would have said more about the real potential of co-operative housing solutions. There are already important co-operative models in the rented sector, but we also need to introduce more intermediate market housing.