Chris Leslie
Main Page: Chris Leslie (The Independent Group for Change - Nottingham East)Department Debates - View all Chris Leslie's debates with the HM Treasury
(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that UK economic productivity has been stagnating for several years with productivity growth the second worst of the G7 countries; recognises that supporting business to improve output efficiency and enhanced productivity is the best route to higher living standards and in turn is crucial for the health of the public finances; regrets that the Chancellor failed to address productivity in his March Budget speech; urges the Government to ask the Office for Budget Responsibility to report on the impact on productivity of the options likely to be considered in the forthcoming Spending Review; and believes that decisions on reducing public service expenditure must take into account their impact on productivity performance.
The productivity of our economy and of businesses, the workforce and the resources of our country is critical for our recovery and for our future prosperity. There should be a cross-party consensus that productivity is the key challenge facing Britain today, which is why I was very disappointed by the Chancellor’s attitude at Treasury questions yesterday and at his point-blank refusal to engage with this crucial debate in the House of Commons today. We have learned that when it comes to dealing with issues that he does not want to attend to, the Chancellor either blames someone else or sends someone else. In that growing tradition, I welcome the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury to his new role.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Greg Hands
Surely the hon. Gentleman must admit that, given that the Chancellor was here yesterday at Treasury questions, and able to answer questions on productivity, and that he was here again today as First Secretary for Prime Minister’s questions, and able to answer questions on productivity, he has been available in this House to answer questions.
Chris Leslie
I am sure the Chancellor is very much focused on being the Prime Minister in waiting. He is, of course, the eminent First Secretary of State, and I hope his junior Ministers occasionally manage to peek round his door and get the odd minute of his very busy time on these matters.
The mark of a Chancellor focused on our economic challenges would have been to engage a bit more thoughtfully in considering how best we can tackle Britain’s productivity problems, but he could not bring himself to mention productivity once during his 8,000-word Budget speech three months ago.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is being a little churlish. I am sure that we can all be accused of all sorts of things, but over the past five and a half years my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has focused with Exocet precision on making the economy grow, increasing jobs and getting us on the move again. Such churlishness belies the hon. Gentleman.
Chris Leslie
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman finds my remarks a little churlish. When did he last speak to the Chancellor about productivity?
Simon Hoare
Clearly, the hon. Gentleman is not a barrister. One should never ask a question to which one does not know the answer: last Thursday in the Lobby.
Chris Leslie
I am delighted to hear it. I only wish that the Chancellor would come and talk to the rest of us about productivity.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. For the record and for the avoidance of doubt, it is not normal practice, although I will forgive the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) on this one occasion, for the performer at the Dispatch Box to ask questions of the other side’s Back Benchers. In case anyone who is new to the House thinks that this is how we do things, I should say that it is not. However, on this occasion, I will allow some leniency.
Chris Leslie
Thank you for that sage advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. I suspect that the Chancellor will be forced to address the question of productivity in the forthcoming emergency Budget on 8 July. Let us dwell for a moment on why productivity matters.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I think that my hon. Friend is being a little unfair on the Chancellor. I have asked the Chancellor several times about productivity and he has no answers. That is the truth of the matter. Time and time again, the Opposition have asked the question and he does not know the answer, because productivity is flatlining.
Chris Leslie
That is why I think it is so appalling that the Chancellor could not be bothered to mention it in the Budget speech in March. It should be at the top of the agenda of all Treasury teams and all Departments—
Chris Leslie
I will give way in a moment to the hon. Gentleman, who will, I know, have plenty to contribute on the subject.
Our economic prosperity depends on maximising the output from the efforts of working people and the resources available to business. The amount of output per hour worked is a useful way for us to measure whether our economy is advancing and adding value, or whether we are just treading water. Creating a more productive economy means creating a virtuous circle of higher growth, higher living standards and, as a consequence, more effective deficit reduction. When working people can produce more and they have the tools and the skills to create output more efficiently, employers can afford to pay them more, tax revenues become more buoyant and our GDP can grow in a more sustainable way.
Chris Leslie
I will give way to my hon. Friend after I have given way to the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier).
Mark Garnier
The shadow Chancellor is absolutely right: productivity is incredibly important. The Treasury Committee and The Economist have been banging on ad nauseam about it, certainly during my five years as a Member of Parliament. Why has he picked up on it only in the past six months?
Chris Leslie
I will send the hon. Gentleman the anthology of Chris Leslie’s speeches, because I am sure that he will be keen to find out every occasion—in 2013, 2014 and 2015—on which I have talked about productivity. I have been talking about it for a very long time. We must not think of it as simply a parliamentary issue. The CBI has emphasised the importance of higher productivity as the only way to secure long-term and sustainable wage growth. In the words of the Governor of the Bank of England,
“productivity growth—doing more with less—is the key determinant of income growth. Our shared prosperity depends on it.”
As Paul Krugman famously put it:
“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.”
We need a cross-party approach to the challenge.
Andrew Gwynne
The Chancellor is always very keen to make economic comparisons between the United Kingdom economy and G7 counterparts, but UK output per hour is 17% below the G7 average and a huge 31% below the USA average. Is not that the root cause of this problem?
Chris Leslie
We can see that the problem is particularly stark when we make those international comparisons. Our productivity growth rate has plummeted to the second worst in the G7. The UK was ranked 29th out of 36 OECD countries for GDP growth between 2010 and 2014. My hon. Friend makes an important point.
Mr Cunningham
Surely we can take the argument further when we talk about productivity. This is not a new debate—it has been going on for very many years. We do not necessarily have to look at hourly productivity; we have to give the individual who produces things the equipment and research to do the job. That is how we increase productivity, when we break it all down.
Chris Leslie
As my hon. Friend says, it is incredibly important to invest in new production process technologies and make sure that we have the necessary machinery and capital equipment. I will turn to business investment and how we can incentivise it. We have to make sure that the Chancellor addresses those challenges. He has his emergency Budget and his own political priorities that he wants to put first, but this, ultimately, is the key.
Chris Leslie
The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) was on his feet first, and I would not want to pick the right hon. Gentleman before him.
Andrew Bridgen
The shadow Chancellor talks about productivity and the need to invest in plant and machinery, and the need for cross-Chamber support, to improve our productivity. Does he therefore support the Conservative Government’s maintenance or increase of capital allowances for businesses, giving them a clear incentive to invest in their businesses?
Chris Leslie
Labour Members have consistently supported proper and sustained capital allowances for business investment. One of the errors in the previous Parliament was that the Chancellor reduced them so rapidly before he then saw the error of his ways and returned them to the level at which they are now. That chopping-and-changing, stop-start approach is anathema to good, proper, long-term business planning.
We would not know it from the Chancellor’s complacency, but UK economic productivity is stuck in the slow lane. According to the Office for National Statistics, the stagnation of productivity growth is “unprecedented” in post-war Britain. Earlier this month, the OECD said that weak labour productivity remains a problem and that
“the sustainability of economic expansion and further progress in living standards rest on boosting productivity growth”.
The Bank of England has emphasised the “extremely and uncharacteristically weak” growth in UK productivity and said that there is still
“great uncertainty about how productivity might evolve”
and how that could affect the economy.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Why does my hon. Friend think that productivity has been so stagnant for the past three years in particular?
Chris Leslie
The evidence is very clear that we have had persistently poor productivity in recent years. I will talk about the impact of Government investment on infrastructure and tackling the skills challenge that we need to address. The issue has been very much kicked into the long grass in recent years, and that is not good enough.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for introducing this debate on an important subject. Does he accept that in certain areas and segments, such as car manufacturing, UK productivity is high? At Nissan, for example, productivity is as high as at any car manufacturer in Europe. Will he applaud the Government’s proposals to create 3 million apprentices? Nissan and other manufacturers accept that it is through the apprenticeship schemes that productivity will be raised.
Chris Leslie
It is important to recognise that productivity problems are not the same across every single sector. Some sectors are managing to break through and making a difference, perhaps relative to other sectors in other parts of the world. It is important that we focus on apprenticeships and skills, but the quality of those apprenticeships is key as well. I will say more about skills, on which we have just had an Opposition day debate.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Some apprenticeships are undoubtedly very good, but I am aware of some in north Staffordshire and the wider area that are little more than “YTS rebranded”—people come in, work for a period almost as exploited slave labour, are then kicked out, and the next batch of apprentices are brought in. There are some very good apprenticeships, but some are frankly scandalous.
Chris Leslie
I agree that we need far better scrutiny of the nature of apprenticeships and of skills and training. We sometimes have a blanket approach that all schemes or tax incentives are the same and—this is the classic Whitehall problem—leave them without going into the detail of how they add value and of how quality fits in. I would advocate a better look at the quality of such investments.
John Redwood
This is a very important debate, and we can learn together about how we can do better. During the 13 years of the Labour Government, there was practically no productivity gain whatever throughout the whole public service. Why was that, and what can we learn from it?
Chris Leslie
Normally, I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I am afraid his facts on that are wrong. Under the previous Labour Government, we had a period of sustained productivity growth. [Hon. Members: “Public sector!”] Did I hear something, Madam Deputy Speaker? When it comes to private sector productivity, we had a sustained period of growth. We can talk about public sector productivity, but I am focusing on the wider economic, private sector productivity, which is ultimately the way in which we create wealth and prosperity in this country.
I am very proud of what the previous Labour Government did. Between 1997 and the period just before the global financial crisis, productivity grew by an average of 2.2%. In fact, it reached 4.2% in 2003. At the time, the UK’s productivity was second only to that of the United States. The CBI has emphasised that improvements in labour productivity accounted for almost three quarters of UK economic growth during that decade. Over that period, real wages rose faster in the UK than in other advanced economies, and rising productivity and GDP growth meant that the previous Labour Government were able to take significant steps in tackling poverty and improving public services. That was not by accident, but by design.
We achieved sustainable growth in productivity because of relentless efforts to focus on competition, innovation, investment, skills and enterprise, including a 10-year framework for science and innovation, incentives for investment in business research and development, the expansion of higher education and adult and vocational training. That was the record of the previous Labour Government.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that employers also have a big role to play? The appetite for low-paid, unskilled employees has added to the problem. Employers must value workers much more, invest in them and be prepared to pay them wages that mean it is worth while investing in them.
Chris Leslie
There is indeed a problem in the shift away from the added-value, higher-skilled economy that we must have to maintain our place in, and indeed win, that famous global race. If we think that we can do it simply by chasing lower-wage, lower-skilled markets, we will never ultimately succeed relative to other countries.
Chris Leslie
I will make a little progress, if I may, and then give way.
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s recent forecasts have lamented the persistent weakness of our recent productivity. According to the OBR, if our productivity per worker was closer to 4%, our national debt would be £350 billion lower by the end of this Parliament. Those are big numbers, but that is £5,000 less debt for each person in this country. The productivity issue is therefore absolutely crucial, and it is linked to the health of our public finances. Translated into potential GDP, it would mean growth of 3.7% by 2019-20, which is the sort of growth that we need in this country. The OBR is right to warn that improvements in growth and living standards very much depend on our productivity performance and to say that it is the most important and uncertain part of its economic forecasts.
Quite simply, if sustainable productivity growth fails to materialise, the Chancellor will just continue to miss his deficit reduction targets, however hard he may try to distract us with his dreams about permanent surpluses. Although productivity traditionally drops off during a recession, seven years after the global banking crisis our productivity is still 1.7% below the pre-crisis peak, and a whopping 16% below the level implied by the pre-crisis trend. Last year, productivity growth was just 0.2%; in 2013, it was negative, at minus 0.3%; and in 2012, minus 1.2%. That is just not good enough.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
The figure that the hon. Gentleman has not mentioned is, of course, the productivity figure for 2009—the last year in which Labour was in government—and in that year it dropped by a staggering 2.6%, the highest for the last 25 years.
Chris Leslie
This might be a shock to the hon. Gentleman, and I am not sure where he was at the time, but there was a global banking crisis—[Interruption.] I know it is a shock to Conservative Members, because in their script it has been expunged from the record, as if it never happened.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech. Does he agree that the culture of long working hours can often be the enemy of productivity? The textbook example is Volkswagen 10 or 20 years ago: when the working week was cut from 35 to 28 hours, productivity went up. When workers feel that they do not have all day to do the job, they get on with that job and productivity rises.
Chris Leslie
I think there is a case to be made for ensuring that we focus on the morale of those in employment. There is an optimal point from which morale can dip and fall. We have to focus on what creates the optimal circumstances for those in work to produce the amounts that our economy needs. That is all part of this complicated picture.
When we have managed to get the Chancellor to talk about productivity in the past, he has referred to a “productivity puzzle”. If we are looking for clues to the solution to that puzzle, looking more closely at the nature of our economic recovery is important. It still feels a bit stressed, quite fraught and fragile. Reflecting on that is part of the solution.
On skills, just a few weeks ago, the Office for National Statistics published its analysis showing that the share of high-skilled jobs in the economy is falling relative to the share of low-skilled work, which is of course taking its place. The Bank of England’s last inflation report stated that since mid-2013 employment growth had been more concentrated in lower-skilled occupations, concluding that this shift in the composition of the labour force could have dragged down aggregate productivity growth over the past two years.
That is not something that we should simply accept. I do not believe that we are just at the mercy of events and unable to influence our economic productivity. On this side, we believe that it does not have to be that way. History shows that Britain can do better. By contrast with the traditional Conservative approach, which is to step back and hope that productivity magically springs from the market out of thin air, we take a very different view. We believe that decent infrastructure and decent public services can support business growth. Motorways that flow freely and trains that commuters can get on; tax offices that answer business queries efficiently rather than keeping their company staff always on hold; swift treatment of sick employees in a decent NHS: all that is part of the productivity story, as is an education system that supports a workforce with high-quality skills. So many aspects of our public services are crucial for our future economic productivity. Each of those depends on the Chancellor making the right fiscal choices for this Parliament. This should have been at the top of the Chancellor’s agenda throughout the last Parliament; for him not even to mention it in the last Budget speech was a grievous error.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is important to look at the facts. The hon. Gentleman quoted the ONS. Does he agree that when the ONS talked about oil and the financial service industries, it said:
“Together, these two industry groupings account for the majority of the fall in productivity since Q1 2008.”?
Chris Leslie
As I said earlier, different sectors face different productivity challenges. Ultimately, if we think that this is just a problem in one or two sectors, we would be wrong. We need to address this forensically and make sure that we look from sector to sector to assess the problem in a mature, evidence-led way. That is what we need to do.
I am aware that many Members want to join the debate because they believe that productivity is an important topic. I respect them for that, but it is important not to let this issue pass without seeing the connection between productivity and the health of our public finances. We still have a £75 billion deficit in this country and I would like the new Chief Secretary to at least acknowledge in his response to the debate the truth that stronger productivity is crucial for repairing the public finances.
We need sensible savings across non-protected Departments to reduce levels of public expenditure, but if the Chancellor makes the wrong fiscal choices in the forthcoming emergency Budget he could make the situation far worse. There is a hard-headed business case for protecting and prioritising those services that enhance investment, skills and innovation. That is the responsible fiscal approach the Chancellor should take. Productivity should not be adversely affected by his fiscal choices and that is the point that I hope the Chancellor will understand. Whether he does and whether he can see through his political ambitions to the economic consequence of the decisions he takes are the important issues.
I have written to Robert Chote, the director of the Office for Budget Responsibility, to see whether we can make some progress, working across parties, to try to get a better evidence-led approach to the impact of the choices the Chancellor faces on productivity and on levels of public investment. I think that an OBR review would acknowledge the centrality of the productivity challenge and would help to make the right choices for the country. It would be better to have that evidence-led understanding of the consequences of alternative fiscal choices.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
When my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) intervened and mentioned the oil industry, which has become significantly less material to the national accounts and is massively productive in value-added for numbers of people, the shadow Chancellor did not answer the question properly. One of the productivity challenges is the significant relative demise of the oil industry, and the hon. Gentleman should not use words such as “forensic” without recognising that.
Chris Leslie
As one industry declines, others will have to fill the gap. It is also important to recognise that multiple aspects of energy activity and energy markets are coming on stream and we need to ensure that we develop them and exploit new opportunities for our country, for energy security and for our future economic prosperity.
Robert Flello
My hon. Friend is being extremely generous with his time. I was hoping that he might touch on the question of workers on zero-hours contracts. They have seen their salaries driven down to minimum wage levels, they might have to supply their own uniform, and, if they are an agency worker, they might not know from one day to the next what they will be doing and where they will be doing it. Is it any wonder that their productivity is depressed?
Chris Leslie
That is a crucial point. A far healthier environment is one in which the workforce feel valued and that they have a stake in the output, not just in their wages but as partners in the company or in the firm. Those are the sorts of discussions we must have about the economy we want for the long term.
The Chancellor faces a fork in the road, and this is very relevant as the emergency Budget on 8 July approaches. Will he take an ideological approach to public services and public investment or will he join a consensus that productivity, growth and living standards should be at the heart of those Budget choices? We are now hearing some practical options that are open to the Chancellor if he is serious about boosting productivity.
We need further reform of incentives to encourage research and development, support scientific discovery and underpin long-term financial backing for projects that do not necessarily always yield near-term returns. We need to break the politicking about infrastructure and flush through the pipeline of stalled projects. Ministers should feel free to steal the idea of a more independent and evidence-led approach to infrastructure prioritisation as advocated so eloquently by Sir John Armitt in his report for us before the election. We need to sweat the authorisations already voted for by Parliament to underwrite infrastructure development with Government-backed guarantees, which are so woefully underutilised at present. We need skills and training to flourish and not fall victim to short-term and ill-thought-through budget decisions driven by a political timetable. We need serious action on housing supply to help working people with the choices they face in work and to support new employment opportunities as they arise; and we need clarity that local enterprise partnerships will get the immediate devolved powers required to unlock local growth—not political delays because the Chancellor takes exception to a particular form of local governance arrangement.
We need an early decision in response to the Davies commission report on airport capacity. It is due imminently, but Ministers are already starting to kick it into the long grass. Apparently they are only going to address this vital question at the end of this year at the earliest. We also need real announcements, in short order, on specific rail interconnectivity between towns and cities. Those are some of the priorities that deserve urgent attention at the top of Government.
Will the Chief Secretary shed some light on the thinking of his great and glorious leader, the First Secretary of State, or will we have to wait for this agenda to fit into a Downing Street soundbite before it gets any attention? I genuinely wish the Chief Secretary luck in gaining favour with the Prime Minister-in-waiting, because right now we have a Chancellor distracted by his political ambitions who cannot even be bothered to debate productivity, let alone remember to mention it in his Budget speech. Britain cannot afford this issue being neglected any longer, and we will keep reminding the Chancellor—when he is here—of his responsibilities until real action is taken.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)
I am delighted to respond to this debate on productivity, because it is absolutely central to our long-term plan to fix the economy. My ministerial colleagues at the Treasury have been candid about the scale of the productivity challenge, so in some ways I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has said, but this is a challenge that the UK has faced for decades, not “several years” as the motion suggests.
We have been very clear that increasing productivity is a key challenge in this Parliament for this Government: it will be a key focus of ours over the next five years. Indeed, the Chancellor noted as early as August 2010—very early on in the last Government—that our relatively low productivity was a drag to economic recovery, when he spoke at Bloomberg about the economy of the future.
The hon. Gentleman has said that productivity was not mentioned in the Budget, but I refer him to page 1—the very first page—of the Budget document.
Greg Hands
No, first of all I am going to tell the hon. Gentleman what it says:
“The deficit remains too high and productivity too low, there are still long-standing structural weaknesses in the economy, and the gap between the economic performance of London and the rest of the UK remains too wide.”
Chris Leslie
The key thing is the difference between the Budget document and the Budget speech. The Budget speech was more than an hour long, so why did the Chancellor not mention that very paragraph?
Greg Hands
Surely the most important thing is the delivery of the Budget, not just the speech. The delivery of the Budget was all about things such as digital communications infrastructure, housing, science, innovation, freezing fuel duty, doing something for the oil and gas regime, the sharing economy and backing business by launching a comprehensive review of business rates. The most important thing in government is what is delivered.
The Chancellor announced four weeks ago—way before the hon. Gentleman tabled a motion or wrote an article—that we will publish a productivity plan: a plan to make Britain work better. I will remind the hon. Gentleman of that speech, because he was there with various Labour leadership contenders, minus the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). Curiously, he seemed to have been missed off the CBI invitation list, but he may be up for an invitation in the future. The Chancellor said:
“Let me be clear”—
perhaps he was not clear enough for the hon. Member for Nottingham East—
“improving the productivity of our country is the route to raising standards of living for everyone in this country.”
I am sure the shadow Chancellor will recall that, because he was there.
It speaks volumes that the Treasury ministerial team announced in May by the Prime Minister includes Jim O’Neill, one of the most respected economists in the country and an authority on productivity. His input is more about deeds than words and it will be vital as we put in place the policies that will turbo-charge our economy.
Our productivity plan will build on the significant supply-side reforms we have put in place over the past five years. It will be wide-ranging and ambitious. It will look to the long term. It will help rebalance the economy and build the northern powerhouse. It will improve our infrastructure and reduce burdens on businesses; increase our support for childcare; ensure that many more affordable homes are built; expand apprenticeships and equip us with the skills we need for the 21st century; and make a bold next step in this country’s remarkable economic recovery.
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend makes his point in his usual way. All that I can say—
Greg Hands
Yes, my hon. Friend is here, unlike half the shadow Treasury team who went into the election and were wiped out by either the Conservatives or the Scottish National party—and that includes the hon. Gentleman’s former leader.
Greg Hands
Okay, I hear the hon. Gentleman.
To answer the point raised by hon. Member for Nottingham East about the OBR, the OBR already produces forecasts and commentary on productivity, and will continue to do so independently and impartially as it always has done.
Chris Leslie
We are looking for the right hon. Gentleman’s support in commissioning the OBR to look at the spending choices the Chancellor has before him. He will have to acknowledge that certain decisions on reducing public expenditure could have more of an adverse effect on productivity than others. We want to make sure that we have a proper analysis of the impact of those decisions. That would be a better, more sensible way to think about how we spend. It is not just a debate about how much we spend.
Greg Hands
The OBR remit is pretty clear on this kind of thing. Let me just say that I have listened to the hon. Gentleman a great deal in the past five years. Coming from a party that never set up the OBR, or any equivalent to it, he seems now to be rather over-fascinated in what its operations should be. He might have thought of some of those questions during the 13 years of the Labour Government.
The hon. Gentleman said that employment growth had been of poor quality. I would dispute that. I think we will find that in the five years since the first quarter of 2010, more than 60% of the increase in employment has been in high skilled occupations. Some 75% of the increase has been in full-time employment and, after the excellent results this week, wages growth now exceeds inflation for the eighth consecutive month.
I am going now to make a bit of progress, because I am conscious that we have one or two maiden speeches coming up and a highly subscribed debate. Let us look at what we did in the previous Parliament. In 2010, the priority clearly for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor was to put in place a jobs-based recovery. We all know the result: 1,000 jobs created every day, with three quarters of them full time. The employment rate is now at its highest on record at 73.5% and around the highest level on record at 31.1 million. We make no apology for prioritising job growth in the past five years. It is the best way to make people’s lives better, as the nearly 12,000 people who found employment in the shadow Chancellor’s constituency will surely agree.
At the same time, we put in place important supply side measures to improve our national productivity. We increased average public and private infrastructure investment to about £47 billion a year between 2011 and 2014, which is more than a sixth higher than it was in the previous Parliament. We have completed 15 major schemes on the strategic road network, worth £3.4 billion, with a further 17 schemes, worth £2.5 billion, under way. We have completed more than 2,650 infrastructure projects and extended access to superfast broadband to more than 2.5 million more premises. We have accelerated the academies programme, with more than 4,600 academies now opened, and we have set the path for high-speed rail to unleash the full potential of our northern cities. We have protected the science budget in cash terms and set out a long-term capital commitment on the science budget as well, ensuring that it will rise in line with inflation for the duration of the Parliament.
Greg Hands
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to this place and thank him for his intervention. I do not necessarily disagree with anything he says. Equally, I am sure that he would welcome what has been done in Hove in the past five years. Unemployment has fallen by, I think, almost 1,200 in his constituency—a 53% fall in joblessness. We will consider what he proposes, but he must recognise what has been delivered for his constituency.
We have raised the annual budget of Innovate UK, the core innovation support mechanism for businesses in the UK, from £360 million in 2011 to more than £500 million in 2015-16. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will also be delighted to learn that we have put a premium on apprenticeships, of which more than 2.2 million have been created, and that we have pledged to deliver 3 million this Parliament.
As I said, productivity began to rise last year, although we are still below our pre-crisis peak. We agree on the extent of the problem. The OBR expects productivity to pick up in 2015 and to grow at a reasonable rate afterwards in every year of the forecast period, which is good news for businesses and individuals and has undoubtedly contributed to our economic recovery.
I want to say a few words about the next five years, because, although a lot has been done, now is the time to redouble our efforts. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor told the CBI last month that we had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to find an extra gear for the British economy. Our productivity plan will set out how we will do that, and I will not, and cannot be expected to, pre-empt that plan. Let me remind hon. Members, however, of our manifesto commitments to boost productivity. We said we would invest in infrastructure, on which previous Governments failed to take the decisions that other countries did, meaning we fell behind in the ’90s and in the time of the last Labour Government.
Can you imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, that in 2010 we did not even have a national infrastructure plan? I appreciate that the hon. Member for Nottingham East was not here between 2005 and 2010, having lost his seat in Shipley, but he was a Minister for part of the time Labour was in government, so he could have raised some of these points when he was sitting around the table. We have caught up a lot since, but our historical stop-start approach has meant that our physical infrastructure is not nearly as good as it should be. Now is our opportunity to fix that.
Greg Hands
No, I am going to make a bit more progress.
We will invest more than £100 billion in infrastructure over the next Parliament, including more than £70 billion in transport alone, of which £15 billion will be spent on our roads.
Greg Hands
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.
We are investing in broadband and home building, with a commitment to build 200,000 starter homes to be sold at a 20% discount exclusively to first-time buyers under the age of 40.
Greg Hands
I have allowed the shadow Chancellor quite a bit of time already, so I will give way to the Member for Washington.
Greg Hands
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that series of questions, but his use of statistics was highly selective. I am sure he will join me in celebrating the fact that the two regions in which employment is rising the fastest are the north-west and the north-east. Of all regions, the north-east leads the way in export growth. I am sure he will also join me in welcoming the fall of 1,518 in unemployment in his constituency under the last Government—again, just shy of a 50% fall.
Chris Leslie
I thank the Member for Fulham for giving way. Would he be so good as to look at the point he was making on transport infrastructure? I asked about the Davies commission on airport capacity, which he knows is an issue affecting Britain’s productivity as a whole. Will he give us an assurance that the Government will make a swift decision when presented with the final conclusions of the commission’s report, and not kick it into the long grass until the end of the year or beyond?
Greg Hands
The position is unchanged. It is as set out in our manifesto. We await the publication of the Davies report, and we will act accordingly. However, we recognise that airport capacity is an issue, which is why we commissioned the report in the first place.