Oral Answers to Questions

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I will be visiting Norwich research park later today and will be able to announce £250 million of research funding going into life sciences across the country. Alongside the commitment to human health that we have already made, this will be a commitment to research in animal health, plant breeding and the agricultural industries of the future.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

This Government inherited an economy that was growing, with unemployment falling and a recovery settling in. The revised GDP estimate for the first quarter of this year, far from being revised up, as some expected, has just been revised down. With the country in a double-dip recession created by this Government, 50 businesses going under every single day, and over 2.6 million people out of work, this shambolic Government have been squabbling over a report produced by a millionaire Tory donor that suggests that all would be well were it not for people’s rights at work. Why on earth are they going along with this nonsense instead of, for example, implementing the active industrial strategy that we need?

[Mr Willetts]

Let us be clear: this coalition Government also inherited an economy that had been hit by a major financial crisis because of Labour’s failure to regulate financial services, and unsustainable levels of Government borrowing which the head of the International Monetary Fund said earlier this week caused her to shiver when she thought what would have happened if they had not been tackled. We are committed, rightly, to reducing the burden of red tape and regulation on the economy, and alongside that we are constructively investing in and supporting the industries of the future.

[Mr Umunna]

This is a no-growth Government with their head in the sand. They blame businesses, they blame the people who work in them, and now they blame the eurozone, when countries such as Germany and France are not in recession and we are. They said that they would increase lending to small businesses, but there has been a net contraction in lending to small businesses in every single month of this Government. They said that they would support different industries, from defence to renewables, but they have failed to do so. They boasted that their regional growth fund would create more than half a million jobs, but the National Audit Office tells us that it has created less than a tenth of that. We have always known that Tory-led Governments are heartless. Do today’s figures not demonstrate that they are hopeless too?

[Mr Willetts]

That pre-prepared speech had nothing to do with the reality of the industrial strategy being pursued by this coalition, which is delivering big increases in exports to the big markets of the future. Exports to China are up 18%, exports to India are up 29% and exports to Brazil are up 11%. Employment is up, inflation is down and public borrowing is down. [Interruption.]