G20

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I learned a very important lesson from our experience in the exchange rate mechanism: never fix interest rates in a way like that because you may need a different interest rate in your economy from that applying elsewhere. That is why I am so completely opposed to Britain ever joining the euro. I could not be clearer about that—unlike the Labour party, which spent 13 years planning and preparing for our eventual admission to the euro. We must allow other countries to make their own choices, and the choice of people in Greece—it is their business—seems to be that they want to stay in the euro. That is not the choice I would necessarily make—or that Mrs Bone, or even Mr Bone, would necessarily make—but that is the choice they seem to want to make and we have to support them in it.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Another report came out today from the Institute for Public Policy Research showing that 32,000 jobs in the public sector were lost in the north-east last year while the number of private sector jobs also went down, and the number of public sector jobs in London and the south-east went up. Why should the Europeans trust the action plan from the Prime Minister when his inaction plan in this country is destroying the regions of this country?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course there has to be a rebalancing of public sector and private sector jobs in our economy, and of course there are difficult circumstances faced by different parts of the country, but in the north-east we have seen the expansion of the Nissan plant, and we have the new Hitachi train plant going into the north-east as well. What we need to do as a country is to become more competitive—to start manufacturing and making things again, which will benefit all the regions of our country.