Autumn Forecast

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, earlier on I thought I heard the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, describe 2010 as the year of Labour policies, but he said it so sotto voce that I left it there. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, now talks about the strength of the economy this year as being down to the previous Government’s policies. I remind noble Lords of what the OBR says about the reason why growth is now forecast by it to be much stronger in 2010 than had been previously forecast. It is principally down to the confidence of industry in restocking. That position has changed in its forecasts since June. I wonder where that confidence comes from. It comes from the fact that we came in in May and took immediate and decisive action to get the economy under control, which has resulted in British business restocking because it knows that sustained growth is coming. Let us stop going on about this and celebrate the fact that the growth is there and that industry has the confidence to understand precisely that.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that, at the end of this period, with job losses in the public sector being 160,000 fewer than was predicted earlier on in the year, there will in fact be over 350,000 more people working in the public sector than when the Labour Government came into office in 1997? Can he also give an estimate of how much less the reduction in private sector employment will be as a result of this revised forecast over the forecast in June?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. I can confirm the figures that he quoted. The relevance is that, for all the rebalancing of the economy that we are doing and the very significant rebalancing of the welfare system, the shift of jobs out of the public sector is now very significantly below what was achieved even within the past 20 years in the early 1990s. Therefore, we should have confidence in the productive capability of the private sector to absorb that number of jobs many times over. I can only stand by the figures for the net increase of employment that are set out by the OBR in its tables.