Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and George Osborne

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is a huge champion of Plymouth and the south-west. We will have time to address the south-west in questions.

The Heysham link road is a major achievement for my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris). People have campaigned for it for 70 years. I happened to visit about a week before the general election with the Prime Minister. Because of my hon. Friend’s fight for infrastructure and jobs in his seat, he is back in the House doing his job.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

22. Despite the Chancellor’s talk of a northern powerhouse, will he admit that output per hour in the north-west is still lower than the average for England, and lower than it was in 2007? Is it not true that his plan to improve the economy of the north-west has drastically failed that region?

[Mr Osborne]

The north-west has seen a huge increase in employment—it has had the fastest rate of employment growth in the entire United Kingdom. I would have thought the hon. Lady would welcome that.

The northern powerhouse initiative was instigated by me and the Labour and Conservative council leaders of Greater Manchester. It has been done on a cross-party basis. I would like to think that, at the beginning of this Parliament, we can work across the party divide, including in this Chamber, to bring about that major rebalancing of the British economy, which has eluded Governments for many generations.

Charter for Budget Responsibility

Debate between Helen Jones and George Osborne

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor give way?

[Mr Osborne]

No; I am going to end my speech now. [Interruption.] Well, I want to make sure that all these Labour Members have a chance to stand up and say exactly what they think of the welfare cap, and tell us that they support it, and that they should have introduced it when they were in office. They look such a cheery bunch. I want to make sure that they have a chance to explain what they are voting for this afternoon—or perhaps some of them will not.

I could set out more of the details, but much of that has already been done in the Red Book. This is the key point that I want to make to Labour Members. The welfare cap brings responsibility, accountability and fairness. Those who want to undo our welfare reforms will now have to tell us about the other cuts that they will make, or else come clean and admit to the public that what they really want are higher welfare bills. The phoney argument that welfare can be magically cut by a Government’s spending more and borrowing more will run into the brick wall of the OBR’s independent assessment. The phoney argument that a Government can spend half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money on a spare room subsidy and pay for it with a cut in winter fuel payments worth a fifth of that will be exposed by an inevitable breach of the welfare cap. The “welfare party” will have to make its case for more welfare spending in the plain sight of the British people.

Our welfare cap ensures that never again can the costs spiral out of control and the incentives become so distorted that it pays not to work. From now on, any Government who want to spend more on welfare will have to be honest with the public—honest about the costs—and secure the approval of Parliament in order to breach the cap. Twenty-six benefits will be controlled by the welfare cap as part of our long-term economic plan to restore sanity to the public finances. This is a system that is affordable and fair, and I commend it to the House.

Economic Policy

Debate between Helen Jones and George Osborne

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with all the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend. Of course, all countries in the western world are confronting their debt problems. When it comes to trade, one of the big initiatives we need to pursue in the next couple of years, principally through G8 leaders rather than the G7 Finance Ministers, is the possibility of a free trade agreement with the United States. It was encouraging that the President mentioned that in his inauguration speech. That is one objective, alongside EU free trade agreements with India and Japan, that we should pursue in the coming months.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Last year, just before he was booed at the Olympics, the Chancellor said that this country’s triple A credit rating showed that the world had confidence in his policies. What does he think the downgrading shows?

[Mr Osborne]

As I have been explaining for the past 57 minutes, the test is there each day and each week as we have to borrow money to fund the deficit we inherited—even if it has come down. That is the test, and at the moment the world is lending us money at some of the cheapest rates in our history.