Employment: New Jobs Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Work and Pensions
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
Main Page: Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(10 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister reconsider his views about all of the regions? I come from the north-east and I go back to the north-east every week. I have invited him to the north-east to see what is actually happening. The north-east has lost a significant number of public sector jobs. Yes, it has seen the creation of part-time and full-time private sector jobs, but it still has double-figure unemployment rates.
Lord Freud
Clearly, my Lords, there has been the most enormous recession, and that was built under the previous Government. To remind noble Lords, the latest ONS figures for the 2008 recession show that GDP fell from top to bottom by 7.2%. That compares with the 1930s, for which the NIESR show a fall of only 6.9%—it was worse than the 1930s, a terrible smash. We are pulling it back and the figures in the north and round the rest of the country are showing an improvement. In all of those regions the private sector improvement well outweighs the necessary reduction in public sector jobs.