Employment: Job Creation

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many jobs have been created in the European Union compared to the United Kingdom in the past year.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords, over 2014, the UK saw the largest employment growth of any EU country. The UK continues to perform strongly, and over the past year, employment rose a further 350,000. This has gone alongside a welcome improvement in the rest of the EU, which saw an annual employment rise of 1.8 million.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his response; I think that we will all be encouraged and pleased with the increase of employment levels across Europe. Can he tell us whether the recovery in employment rates across Europe will reduce inward EU migration into the UK?

[Lord Freud]

I think that it is a valuable development —to see improvement in the EU—because we have seen quite a large increase recently in the employment of EU nationals in the UK. Over the past year, for instance, it was 155,000, compared with 30,000 the previous year. So we would expect to see some of the pressure reduced, whereby people are pulled in because we have the jobs, as the jobs start to grow in the rest of the EU.