Employment: Job Creation

Lord Kilclooney Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

An economist would reply that the way to get more productivity out of people is to put more capital in and raise the quality of people’s input. It is clearly a long-standing issue that we have lower productivity than other major countries; the comparisons are often with the US and Germany. However, there is something about the structure of our service-based economy that means the comparisons are not necessarily what they seem to be. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that one of the major challenges of this economy is to get our productivity up.

[Lord Kilclooney (CB)]

My Lords, of the 2.3 million jobs that the Minister states were created, how many were given to United Kingdom citizens?

[Lord Freud]

The bulk of people in the country are British citizens—as are 90% of those in the workplace. The majority of those extra jobs have gone to British citizens but a substantial proportion have gone to outsiders.