Autumn Statement

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend has been a real champion for small businesses and for exporters in her Stourbridge constituency, and for attracting investment into the black country. I pay tribute to the work she has done. The measures we have taken today to help high street stores by increasing the business rate discount to £1,500, to take the smallest businesses out of business rates, and to back exporters and to increase the research and development tax credit for firms in the west midlands are all tribute to the work she has done and the issues she has raised in Parliament.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Chancellor presented things as being very rosy, but a survey that came out today says that 72% of the British public feel no sense of recovery whatsoever. Why is he so out of touch?

[Mr Osborne]

In the hon. Lady’s own constituency, unemployment is down. In her own constituency, economic security has increased as people can see that the country is not in the crisis it was in four or five years ago. She has to ask her constituents this: do they want to return to the economic instability and crisis that everyone remembers under the previous Labour Government, or do they want to stay on course to prosperity? I think the British public will conclude that they want to stay on course to prosperity.