Government's Management of the Economy

Jacob Young Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Today we have seen once again Opposition Members playing the blame game: trying to point the finger at the Government for everything and anything, including for a crisis that has come to us from well beyond our shores. I did find it odd when I read the subject of today’s Opposition day debate, given the legacy of the previous Labour Government. Our record in office has been tested by the electorate three times in the past 10 years, and each time the public have chosen to elect a Conservative Government over Labour’s woeful opposition. The reason I believe the Conservatives have been the public’s choice in each of those elections is that we chose to offer hope and aspiration. That is still true today, with an optimistic Government speaking about the immense challenges we still face, but ones that the British people will rise to, versus an Opposition who are focused on doing down our efforts to protect the economy and save as many jobs as we can.

We can see the same thing playing out locally in Teesside in our upcoming mayoral elections. In 2015, Redcar lost its steelworks with the closure of SSI, but rather than accepting our fate as a once great region that built the world, we rose to the challenge of transforming the site, taking public control of 4,500 acres, beginning our regeneration of it and being backed by more than £200 million of Government investment so far. This regeneration is being spearheaded by our Conservative Mayor, Ben Houchen, with ambitious plans for the Teeswork site to build a new greener Teesside that champions carbon capture and storage, wind power and hydrogen. Key to all of this is our goal of a free port in Teesside, with an ambitious plan to bring in more than 18,000 jobs over the next five years. Meanwhile, Labour locally offers only negativity, doing down the opportunity presented to us and talking down Teesside and the plans that we have.

Let me speak directly to today’s motion. I thank the Labour party for this opportunity to remind ourselves how grateful we are to successive Conservative Governments who have fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Never could we have been in a better position to deal with a crisis of this magnitude—if, of course, it is at all possible to be prepared for such a crisis. Since 2010, after nine years of consecutive growth, our economy has grown by 19%, which is faster than Italy, France and Japan. That is an entire decade of uninterrupted growth. We had to turn this country around from where Labour had left it, with no money in the Treasury and a deficit running out of control. The Conservative management of the economy has meant that we were able not only to rebalance the books, but to create record high employment across the country to support the public services on which we so heavily rely at this time.

The reality is that those very successes were built on the strong foundations on which we relied when the pandemic hit. Without solid finances, we would not have been able to put in place some of the most generous support schemes in the world, including for businesses and the self-employed, and millions would have suffered unnecessarily. I am proud to stand behind this Government’s record of fixing the roof while the sun was shining.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The wind-ups will begin no later than 3.40 pm.