Business of the House

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, as she is absolutely right. There is some extremely good news in her constituency and neighbouring constituencies, and I am glad she is in a position to highlight that in the House. We are never going to be complacent about the number of young people who are not entering employment. That is why we are putting so much effort into apprenticeships, with 1.6 million apprenticeships planned during this Parliament, which is a significant increase. That will make a very big difference to young people in accessing the jobs that are coming through. Encouragingly, at the same time as we have record numbers of people in employment, we also have record numbers of vacancies, so people can be very optimistic about their prospects.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Council tax rises are one factor in the cost of living crisis, so may we have a debate on how the coalition’s funding distribution is giving the biggest cuts to the most disadvantaged communities and is deliberately calculated so that no matter what efficiencies are found by councils such as Hull’s, they are still having to increase council taxes and cut local services too?

[Mr Lansley]

I am surprised that the hon. Lady should raise that issue because at the moment councils across the country are taking difficult decisions while demonstrating that they can sustain, and in some cases improve, the public’s experience of local government services at the same time as they freeze the council tax. This complaint about council tax rises comes from a party which when in government saw council tax double, as I know from my own constituency. Under this Government, the resources being provided and the incentives to freeze council tax mean that hard-pressed home owners and those paying council tax are finding that their local government services are not costing them a great deal more, as they did in the past.