Unemployment (North-east)
Debate between Annette Brooke and Grahame Morris(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Grahame M. Morris
Absolutely. That is a terrific point and there are many similar examples. In my constituency, Carillion was involved in infrastructure projects including Building Schools for the Future and hospital building programmes. I did not mention it earlier but that company has announced 130 redundancies.
There is no doubt that the north-east was hard hit by the global downturn of 2008, but the policies of this Government are entrenching a north-south divide. To quote a Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman:
“The urge to declare our unemployment problem ‘structural’—a supply-side problem of some kind, not solvable by the ‘simplistic Keynesian’ notion of just increasing demand—has been quite something to behold. It’s rapidly entering the category of a zombie idea, which just keeps shambling forward no matter how many times it has been killed.”
The problem is that demand has been depressed. We need to stimulate demand in the economy. Quite simply, communities and areas such as mine throughout the region cannot pull themselves out of the mire without Government support. Targeted support and intervention are what we need.
Annette Brooke (in the Chair)
Order. I propose a time limit on the remaining speeches, initially of five minutes. Each of the first two interventions accepted will stop the clock and give the hon. Member who gives way another minute; but clearly there will be reductions in the time limit if that happens. The Clerk will ring a bell when a Member has one minute left.