Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will look very carefully, as I always do, at what the right hon. Gentleman says about this, but what I would say is that the last Government had to make very difficult decisions to try to get the peace process started by John Major on track and working. I do not want to unpick all those difficult decisions or second-guess them, because, yes, we have frustrations and difficulties and many other issues that still need to be settled in Northern Ireland, but we have the basic architecture of devolution and parties working together across historical divides, and I do not want to put that at risk.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Q4. Today’s employment figures show that unemployment in Kingswood is down by 37% since May 2010 and, as the MP for Kingswood, since 2012 I have held eight jobs fairs advertising hundreds of local jobs—just some of the 2 million private sector jobs created since this Government came to office—but there is still more to do. Together with the Kingswood job centre, I am launching the Kingswood challenge today, a mentoring or job fostering scheme where local business leaders will be paired with local people looking for work, helping to provide them with one-to-one support.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he is doing with these job fairs to put people who want work in touch with businesses, and this is absolutely key, because there is no complacency on this side of the House about unemployment whatsoever. Youth unemployment, long-term unemployment: we still need to remove these scourges from our country. We have a goal of full employment and the way we will achieve that goal is not simply through a growing economy—now growing faster than those of other countries in the G7—but by making sure we help people and train people and give them all that is necessary to get on and get a job and have that security and stability in their lives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I welcome people making this contribution in our country, as the last Labour Government did by giving the organisation that founded food banks a prize and an award for its work. I point out to the hon. Gentleman that the use of food banks went up 10 times under Labour, but one thing Labour refused to do, which we have done, is to allow jobcentres to point people towards food banks if they need them. The last Labour Government were worried about the adverse publicity, and they put that worry before the needs of people up and down the country.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Q15. Does the Prime Minister agree that we cannot borrow less by borrowing more, that we cannot deal with the deficit left by the last Labour Government by increasing our debts, and that the shadow Chancellor’s plan for doing so is both financially and morally bankrupt?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The policy of the official Opposition is to borrow less by borrowing more. It is completely incredible. That is why the Leader of the Opposition comes here week after week and asks all sorts of questions but will never mention his borrowing policy. It is an extraordinary point, but the Leader of the Opposition has a policy he is so embarrassed about that he cannot tell the House of Commons.