Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Wright Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I regularly meet all the major organisations that are involved in the march. I can reassure the hon. Lady that we are doing work in the Department for Work and Pensions and through the Department of Health, with an extra £7.2 billion going on social care, an extra £3 million being put into user-led organisations and £180 million going on disabled facilities grants. Those are all additional areas of expenditure that disabled people should welcome.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

One in five young people in Hartlepool is without employment, education or training. That is the highest proportion anywhere in the country and is the direct result of Government decisions such as the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance and the cancellation of the future jobs fund. Given the astonishing complacency of the Secretary of State’s earlier answers and given that he has not given a fig about young people throughout this Administration, what practical, tangible steps will he put in place so that young people in Hartlepool are not a neglected, forgotten or lost generation?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I must say to the hon. Gentleman, as I have said to many others, that these problems with youth unemployment are deeply regrettable but, most importantly, while we in government look after the economy and want to see greater levels of growth, he, like all his colleagues, needs to take account of the fact that we are here because of the mess that his party left the economy in and the debts and the deficit—which we have to get rid of.