Diana Johnson
Main Page: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham)Department Debates - View all Diana Johnson's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
I certainly will. I agree 100% with the point the hon. Gentleman is making, and on Friday we will be meeting as the G7, and then we have the ECOFIN meeting next week. He is absolutely right: as well as needing to tackle the fiscal policies and budget deficits, we need to make Europe more competitive. We need to make the whole of the European continent more competitive, and that involves supply-side reforms, deepening the single market and promoting free trade around the world, and I will be making that point today and in future.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
T9. Given the latest data on manufacturing, construction, exports and retail, can the Chancellor explain to me exactly where we will see growth and jobs coming from, especially in an area such as Hull?
Mr Osborne
I hope the hon. Lady welcomes the decision we made to make sure that Humberside had an enterprise zone. The way that this and other countries are going to get growth is not by taking yet another fix of the debt-fuelled spending bubble that got us into the mess we are in at the moment; it is by becoming competitive and having successful private sector businesses and a tax and regulatory environment that allows them to compete with not just the rest of Europe but the rest of the world.