Banking
Lyn Brown Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is right. It is reported that, this Friday, the Leader of the Opposition will make a speech on the economy and attempt to set out an economic policy. I am afraid that his last such speech did not go very well. From what we know about this proposal—very little at this stage—I am not aware of any country in the developed world that has a similar approach, with the possible exception of the former Soviet Union, which adopted a similar approach to its banking sector.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am glad we are discussing history, because I am aware of the hon. Gentleman’s own history as a banker. I wonder what his remuneration and bonuses were back in those days. Given his history and the fact that he should be saying sorry—I presume—will he tell us whether he believes that bankers deserve a bonus in excess of 100% of their salary. Does he think so and does the Chancellor think so?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Lady seems to suggest that it is best to have Ministers who have no experience or knowledge in the areas for which they are responsible. We saw that under the previous Government, and look what happened. To win back the confidence of the British people, we need a long-term economic plan for recovery.
Cost of Living
Lyn Brown Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in a debate that goes to the heart of the concerns of the majority in my constituency. Despite some improvement in recent times, Newham is the third most deprived local authority area in London, and the seventh most deprived in the country. It has been there or thereabouts for many decades. People from West Ham are at the sharp end of the Government’s failing economic policy, and are suffering as prices rise and wages stagnate.
As we have heard over and over again since this Tory-led coalition came to power, working people are now £1,600 per year worse off. While George Osborne—
Lyn Brown
I can only apologise, Mr Speaker. I have spent a long time in the Whips Office.
While the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) is victoriously proclaiming that his plan is working, people in my constituency are really struggling. They are struggling to pay bills, to eat and to provide for their family. This Government have shamelessly failed to offer any support to hard-working people in this country, but have provided tax breaks for their friends and let ordinary families bear the brunt of their policies.
Instead of ensuring that our economy recovered, we have had three years of flatlining. This Government have borrowed more in three years than the previous one did in 13 years, and for what? Was it to help hard-working people and to protect the vulnerable, or to oversee the slowest recovery for more than 100 years and to instigate a cost of living crisis?
Lyn Brown
I will not give way. Two hon. Members still want to speak, and I promised that I would not give way.
I recently surveyed my constituents—[Interruption.] Government Members may want to chunter, but I would like them to listen, because it is about time that they educated themselves on how difficult this is for real people. I asked my constituents how they are managing their energy costs, which we know have risen by almost £300, thanks to the inactivity of this Government. I was absolutely appalled to discover that 41% of respondents are spending more than 10% of their household income on heating their homes. That is fuel poverty.
The Prime Minister and his colleagues tell us that the answer is to switch suppliers. Well, 34% of my respondents told me that they had switched, but then found themselves paying more for their heating than they were saving. Most of the 66% who had not switched suppliers told me that that was not because they were happy with their current supplier, but because, “They’re all the same. I would end up paying more.” As for the Prime Minister’s advice on whether to wear a jumper, the response of 97% of my constituents was, “Wow, patronising or what?” I agree with them. His remarks encapsulate just how out of touch he is with the everyday lives of ordinary people in this country.
Many people told me how the rising cost of living is having a detrimental impact on their lives and those of their children. I was told, “In my household, we have to choose a room to heat and we all spend our time in that room.” How on earth do we expect young people to thrive academically in that environment, or even simply get the space to do their homework? I was told, “I don’t have the heating on as long as I’d like to, to save money”, and “We don’t heat our home until it’s nearly freezing inside.” Premature winter deaths soar in cold weather when people are not able to heat their homes. The most recent statistics show that Newham is ninth out of the 32 London boroughs for the number of excess winter deaths, despite it having the youngest population in the UK.
Paying the heating bills is only one part of the cost of living crisis. In the year to March 2013, rents increased by 2.7% on average across the country. In Newham, rents increased by 15% in the same period. That is an average of £135 more per month. Let us also put into the mix the lack of affordable child care, the difficulty in finding and holding on to employment, and the impact of zero-hours contracts on people’s ability to pay the rent. All those issues have become weekly or even daily concerns for people who live in Newham.
Under this Government, the cost of nursery places has risen by 30%—five times faster than pay. How do the Government think hard-working people in my constituency and in the other constituencies we have heard about, who are often on the minimum wage and are living in expensive private sector accommodation, can afford that hike? What advice would they offer my constituents who are working long hours just to make ends meet and who are worried about decent, affordable child care for their families? How would they advise people in my constituency who are struggling to pay exorbitant rents, but are living in overcrowded and often substandard private sector housing? What would they tell the young person who is struggling to find a decent, full-time job? I will tell you, Mr Speaker.
This Government offer empty platitudes. They are out of touch and have no clue what life is like for ordinary working families. They have allowed prices to rise faster than wages in 39 out of 40 months. And when was that halcyon month when wages rose more than prices? It was the month in which the bankers received their bonuses. Does that not tell us all we need to know about the Government? This Government put the wishes of the privileged before the needs of working people. Trust me, Mr Speaker, I could go on and on talking about the abhorrent impact that the cost of living crisis is having in my constituency. The only people who seem to be completely oblivious are the Members on the Government Benches. They care not about the consequences of their cavalier ignorance on the lives of ordinary people. Britain deserves better.
Income Tax
Lyn Brown Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend sets out some dramatic numbers. They are the correct numbers, although it would be right to say that an element of that had to do with forestalling and people moving their income around. However, Opposition Members should not take great comfort from that. They demonstrate the enormous amount of behavioural change as a consequence of high rates. That level of forestalling is striking. What is also striking is that when the previous Government made their estimate of what would happen with income, no allowance was made for forestalling whatsoever, which again demonstrates flaws with the methodology that was in place.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman makes an erudite argument, as always, and he sounds plausible, but can he not see that ordinary families, who are losing at least £500 per year, facing difficulties buying food and struggling with petrol costs, find it really hard to stomach why the Government are choosing to give £107,000 per year to people who are earning £1 million? It does not make sense to them. It does not make sense to us.
Mr Gauke
In the Office for Budget Responsibility assessment there is a tax cut of £100 million that goes to those who are paying the 50p rate.
In the same Budget package, however, there are measures to deal with stamp duty avoidance on properties over £2 million, a stamp duty increase on properties over £2 million, which is bringing in revenue, and caps on reliefs directed at high-earning individuals. So who is paying the stamp duty and not benefiting from the reliefs as before? They are high-earning individuals. They are paying for the cut in the 50p rate five times over as a consequence of the measures announced in the last Budget. That is the explanation to the hon. Lady’s constituents, and mine, of how the cut is being funded.
Fuel Duty
Lyn Brown Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend makes a good point and shows again where this Government are taking action to balance the nation’s finances.
We are doing a lot more to try to help those in need. We are investing more than £4.5 billion over this Parliament in affordable housing, delivering 170,000 new homes. We have replaced Labour's ineffective stamp duty relief with schemes that work, such as Firstbuy and NewBuy, helping more than 25,000 first-time buyers to find their way on to the first rung of the housing ladder.
Let us look at Labour's claims on tax avoidance. It wants us to clamp down on a scheme that uses a specific tax relief around travel expenses—a relief about which in 2008 the Labour Government, when presented with the facts, chose to do nothing.
Sajid Javid
I will in a moment.
The Labour Government, when presented with the facts about this tax relief in 2008, chose to do nothing. They declared:
“The Government has considered—
Sajid Javid
If the hon. Lady is patient, I will give way in a moment—[Interruption.]
Bank of England (Appointment of Governor) Bill
Lyn Brown Excerpts(12 years ago)
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The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Michael Fabricant)
She’s moving!
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am moving places. Let me gently say to the hon. Gentleman that talking at length on a Bill is indeed an honourable tradition, and it is called filibustering.
Finance Bill
Lyn Brown Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
On Second Reading, we were given to understand that the fuel duty rise was essential to the Government’s proposals and a key piece of the jigsaw in resolving the deficit. For many weeks, that has been the clear message from the Government. I understand that Government Back Benchers were exhorted to write to their constituents to tell them why—regrettably, no doubt—the rise would have to happen and there was no alternative. It therefore comes as rather a surprise to hear that it is not quite so essential to the Government’s plans after all, but is a dispensable piece of the jigsaw.
This is probably the most expensive of the U-turns that have been performed over the past few weeks. It dwarfs many of the others in terms of revenue forgone. It is all very well for the Minister to tell us that it has happened because we have a listening Government, but they must also listen to what they have been saying. On that basis, they must explain how they have come to this position.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend have any idea how much the U-turns have cost collectively so far?
Sheila Gilmore
Indeed, and a lot of people would be glad to see the Government make U-turns in other areas, and in fact in their entire economic policy. It has been misguided, and the Opposition were clear from the start that it was the wrong way to reduce the deficit.
Sheila Gilmore
That is a very important point. We had a semi-answer from the Government saying that savings had been found, but they seem to be somewhat mysterious savings. We had not heard about them before, and we still do not really know where they have been found.
Jobs and Growth
Lyn Brown Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
I rise to support this Queen’s Speech, and I will say something about the Treasury Bills on banking and pensions that feature in it. But first I had better address, head on, the complete nonsense we have heard for the past 30 minutes. Given the claim by the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) that the eurozone has had no impact on the economic difficulties in Britain, and his claim that his 13 years in government did nothing to lead to the debt and the deficit that this Government are trying to clear up, it is no wonder that there were some rather long faces on the Opposition Benches—[Hon. Members: “Where?”] Over there.
My hon. Friend the Government’s Treasury Whip has just received a text from a Labour Whip saying, “Please, please come to the Chamber for the start of the final day of the Queen’s Speech debate. Ed Balls is opening for us and really needs his support.”
Lyn Brown
May I explain to the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), who is sitting over there, that we have a very different and more effective way of whipping those on our Benches than he clearly has on his? Finally, as with everything to do with the economy, the Chancellor needs to pay more attention to detail, because that was not the right reading of the text. Indeed, it was not accurate, like much else he does.
Mr Osborne
The Labour party certainly does have a different whipping operation: it sends all its information to the other political parties.
Let us get back to discussing the economy. The central argument that the shadow Chancellor was trying to make, and the argument he makes in the amendment, is that the British economy is not as strong as the German economy—that is what we are all being asked to vote on tonight. He is absolutely right about that. The British economy is not as strong as the German economy, and I will tell hon. Members why. It is because for the past decade, in the good years, Germany fixed the roof when the sun was shining and he did not when he was in government.
I will tell hon. Members what happened when the right hon. Gentleman was in government. Over the decade before the crash, Germany maintained its share of world exports while Britain’s share almost halved; Germany was selling more than £10 billion of goods a year to China while Britain was exporting one fifth of that—indeed we were exporting more to Ireland than to Brazil, India, China and Russia put together; and Germany’s manufacturing sector grew by 34%, whereas our manufacturing sector not only did not grow but halved as a share of our total output, while our over-leveraged banking sector grew by 100%. Germany, after years of sustainable economic growth, entered the financial crisis with a budget surplus. Britain, in the years that he was in charge, led a debt-fuelled consumption that drove an expansion in deficit and in debt. Under Labour we entered the financial crisis with the largest budget deficit in the G7 and left it with the largest in the G20.
Instead of making us more like Germany, the right hon. Gentleman made us more like Greece when he was in the Treasury. Britain’s economy became over-borrowed, unbalanced and unsustainable. The person more responsible for that than anyone else active in politics today, the person who encouraged the borrowing, dismantled the banking regulation and gambled the futures of 60 million people on the City of London, is sitting right over there—the shadow Chancellor. It is the people on this side of the House who are clearing up the mess he left behind.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Lyn Brown Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Alison McGovern
The hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that if you are poor enough to have a short life span, you are not rich enough to be affected by the change, which is an interesting hypothesis. It is a testable proposition, but it seems entirely wide of the mark.
Alison McGovern
I always try to be generous. In fact, I thought that we were agreeing across the House that the argument about increasing life expectancy cannot be made in such a broad-brush way, but perhaps the situation was not as happy as I had thought it was.
Alison McGovern
That was a long intervention. The hon. Gentleman said that inequality grew under the previous Government. I point him to analysis done, if I recall correctly, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies at the time of the 2010 general election, which showed that the incomes of the lowest on the income scale increased significantly under the previous Government. We can have a discussion about how one deals with the inequality that is created when the incomes of people who earn a great deal of money rise, but I fear that it would not be within the scope of this debate. I am sure that we will discuss that on another occasion.
I will conclude my remarks by talking about the squeezed middle, because it is people on what one would think of as middle incomes who are affected by age-related allowances. In its frequently asked questions section on this policy, the BBC states that
“it is a ‘middle-income’ range of 40% of pensioners who will not get what they might have expected from the tax system.”
Lyn Brown
Is my hon. Friend not astonished by the figure of 40%? If one listens to the Conservative party trying to explain away this awful attack on our pensioners, it does not seem like it is talking about 40% of the pensioners in this country. A very high number of pensioners will be affected by this change.
Alison McGovern
That point was very well made. I am never surprised by the ability of people to brush over things. We have heard this afternoon that this is a minor technical change. As I said, I am quoting the BBC itself—[Laughter.] I know that Conservative Members are not always the greatest fans of the BBC, but it states that
“it is a ‘middle-income’ range of 40% of pensioners who will not get what they might have expected from the tax system.”
Graham Evans
Thank you, Mr Williams. I say to the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) that, as I alluded earlier, many of these points have been raised by other hon. Members on both sides of the House. I will soon bring my speech to an end. I hope he will forgive me.
There is even more support coming business’s way in my neck of the woods with £4.3 million extra for Cheshire and Warrington local enterprise partnerships. In addition, the Budget confirms a further £130 million for investment in the northern hub rail project, which will work well alongside High Speed 2. Furthermore, the new city deals, which will decentralise power and bring even more investment directly up to Manchester and Liverpool, are excellent news for those great cities and my constituents who commute to them in huge numbers each morning.
Graham Evans
I have given away several times. I am bringing my speech to a conclusion.
Finally, I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that people will now receive a personal tax statement detailing exactly how much tax they have paid and what it has been spent on by the Government. This is a great move for transparency. I know that Labour are nervous about what will happen when people see, in black and white, how much of their taxes go on paying interest on the last Government’s debt.
This is an excellent Bill. It is a radical and reforming Bill. It comes from a Government firmly on the side of business, working people and pensioners, and it tells the world that Britain is open for business.
Katy Clark
Thank you, Mr Williams, for giving me the opportunity to follow on from that Second Reading speech by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). I will resist the temptation of talking about the Budget because I had that opportunity in Monday’s Second Reading debate.
Katy Clark
I think that many Government Members must feel ashamed of this policy, particularly given that it was not in the Conservative party’s manifesto. Many people who voted for the Conservatives, particularly pensioners, will be disappointed that they have introduced this policy.
We have heard numerous comments from Government Members giving the impression that the policy would affect super-rich pensioners, but, in reality, pensioners on modest incomes will be affected. It is pensioners on incomes between £10,500 and £29,400 who will be affected by the change. I do not think that anyone in this House can really believe that these are rich people; rather, we are talking about people on modest or middle incomes.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, in which there has been a wide range of contributions. We have had a rerun of the Budget, Second Reading and most of yesterday’s debate. It would seem unreasonable for me not to make a wide-ranging contribution on this topic as well.
Charlie Elphicke
One key point is missing from this debate, and that is a memory on the part of the Labour party. We have heard a lot of cant from the Opposition and they have shown very little memory of the pensions raid back in 1997, which knocks the issue of age-related allowances into a cocked hat. It should be remembered that there was a £150 billion pension stealth tax at that time. Indeed, Ros Altmann, who was an adviser to Tony Blair, famously said that Labour “destroyed our pensions system”. The numbers involved as regards age-related allowances are small compared with that massive and unjustified smash-and-grab raid on our pension system, which destroyed the private savings culture that had been built up over so many years. Then, considering the insidious introduction of pensions means-testing, which was a massive attack on personal responsibility, it is extraordinary to hear arguments from the Labour party that the measures on age-related allowances somehow take away that personal responsibility, given that it introduced a whole system that systematically wrecked the taking of personal responsibility. We need to hear a bit more humility from the Labour party and a bit more of an apology.
Charlie Elphicke
On the contrary, I am really delighted that we have delivered on the pensions triple lock guarantee. Some hon. Members might recall that back in April 2000—it was a long time ago so perhaps the hon. Lady has forgotten—the basic state pension rose by 75p. That was the kind of care and concern we saw for pensioners from the Labour party, whereas the Conservative party is ensuring that we have the highest ever increase in the basic state pension, in cash terms, of £5.30 a week.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Lyn Brown Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Owen Smith
No, you’re all over the place, with the greatest respect, as this car crash of a Budget has shown not just to the House but to the whole country over the past three weeks. As an editorial in The Times said on Monday, when the Budget is still leading the headlines three weeks after the Chancellor has sat down, we know something has gone wrong, and it ain’t just one thing that has gone wrong but just about everything.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I have been reading the media reports too, and I have been astonished to find the Prime Minister called a dilettante. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on that?
Owen Smith
I am not sure that he is a dilettante, but I certainly think he does not pay terribly much attention to details. Had he paid attention to details, he would not have said what he did earlier today in Prime Minister’s questions, when he told the House that the 50p rate had raised next to nothing, only to have his Exchequer Secretary confirm just a few hours later that the actual amount it had raised was £700 million. By my way of looking at it, in a period of fiscal austerity £700 million is not nothing, it is rather a large chunk of change. Certainly the £3 billion that we might lose over an extended period is a very large chunk of change.
I do not know how the Government continue to argue that we are all in it together, when they have given a tax cut to 14,000 millionaires, or how—this is a political point—they can continue to say that the only thing that matters economically is to cut the deficit. They have chosen to forgo a lot of money next year. Let us call it £700 million, but it will be far more. They have done that to give a tax cut to millionaires, so how on earth can they continue to say that only thing they care about is cutting the deficit?
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Lyn Brown Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Nia Griffith
The difficulty with raising the personal tax allowance is, first, that those on very low incomes—those who will have their disability living allowance or housing benefit cut—do not even pay tax. Secondly, those much higher up the scale will benefit from the increased personal allowance. It is often dual-income families, quite high up the scale, who benefit from the personal allowance being pushed up. It is a very expensive way of helping people who are in the position that the hon. Gentleman sets out.
Although people criticised the tax credit system, the whole point of it was that it maximised the amount of benefit that went to the people who really needed it. The irony is that when we were in government, we were often accused of introducing stealth taxes, but look at the amount of indirect taxation now. What people have supposedly been given back through the direct taxation system—that is, through their personal allowance—has already been taken off them through the 20% VAT rate. That is the type of “stealth tax”—the same goes for fuel and so forth—that people resent. They are actually saying that they are paying more tax than before. Even the increased personal allowance will not make up the difference.
The Government propose making a very expensive move that is not properly targeted, and that is worrying, because the money will not feed back into the economy as quickly as it would if it were targeted at those who really need it and would want to spend it straight away. The first problem is that the money is going to the wrong place.
Secondly, we seem to have no growth strategy at all. We are lucky that some of our manufacturers are able to export because they are selling to markets in countries where there are stimulus packages, or strategies to stimulate growth. The fact remains that if we were relying solely on the home market, our manufacturing would be in a dire condition.
With growth flatlining and unemployment rising, the Government, far from bringing the deficit down, are facing the fact that they will have to borrow an additional £150 billion simply to pay people who are out of work. What is the point of that, when we could be paying them to do constructive things such as build council houses or schools? Through employment in manufacturing, they could be learning skills that they could use later. That would keep the skills base going. One of the big problems when there is mass unemployment and a massive drop in the number of people in an industry, whether it is coal mining or building, is that we lose a generation of skills.
People do not want to sit about doing nothing. The overwhelming majority of people whom I meet who cannot find a job are very frustrated at not being able to find work. They are looking for anything and everything. It is often older workers in their 50s and early 60s who particularly suffer. They feel that time and again, they turn up for an interview only to be told that they are too old and cannot be taken on. We want the opportunity for all people—young and old—to get back to work.
Let me give an example of the type of money being taken out of the economy, so that we can see the real problem. In Wales alone, some £6.3 billion will be taken out of the economy over the next three years. We are talking about a very small population of not even 3 million people. The money is coming directly out of the Welsh economy. It is coming from the VAT increase, the loss of jobs in the public sector, and, significantly, most of all, from cuts to the tax credit system and to a wide range of allowances, including the disability living allowance, housing benefit, and council tax benefit. It is coming from a whole range of moneys that were put in to help people who struggle to pay particular bills—people who really could not make ends meet without the money.
As was mentioned, many of the people affected by the housing benefit changes will either find themselves homeless or simply have to use money that they would normally use for food and heating to pay the rent.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that people in that situation have not realised that they are going to be short of money to pay their rent? As they try desperately to keep up with rent payments while their benefit payments are going down, they will find themselves in an awful position, facing debt and having to move home as well.
Nia Griffith
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The frightening thing is that we have not seen anything yet. The cuts in the public sector jobs are just beginning to bite, but the cuts in the tax credit system and in the housing benefit system are loaded towards the next two or three years. The worst thing happening this year was the terrible cut in tax credits on 6 April, with some of the least well-off people losing £4,000 per year because they cannot get extra hours. We know perfectly well that getting extra hours is extremely difficult.
By contrast, our Chancellor lowered the number of hours from 30 to 27 at one point, after the 2008 economic crisis, in order to help people who could not claim working tax credit because they could not get enough hours. We made the reverse decision because we recognised that people were desperate for hours. I met many people who were desperate for any sort of work.
The Government’s policy is very damaging but, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the vast majority of cuts are still to come. The effect on Wales of the tax credit cuts is that £17 million went last year, £148 million will go next year, £188 million the following year, £219 million the following year and £222 million the year after that. Each year the savings are greater, and with every saving there is a bigger cut in people’s income. The same is happening with housing benefit and all the reforms to the universal credit that are coming in.
Those cuts represent a tragedy for each individual family, but more importantly for the whole economy, that is money being taken out of the economy. In other words, it is money that people do not have to spend and therefore money that is not circulating. That will have a devastating effect on our high streets where we are already seeing many well known retailers closing shops. We are lucky in Wales that we had a rescuer for Peacocks. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) has its headquarters in his patch and it has been taken over. None the less, more than half the stores are closing, including two in my own town. That is just one example. I could list dozens of retailers, as I am sure all hon. Members could, in towns up and down the UK, each of which tells the same story: nobody has any money to spend.
It is vital that we consider which way round we should be working in order to get money back into the economy, rather than taking it out. We start with the situation in which money is being dragged out of the economy. What do we do to try and stimulate the economy? We could create jobs. One of the things that Labour suggested is a repeat of the bankers’ bonus tax. We could use the money to create jobs for young people and to stimulate the housing industry and other building projects, such as schools or roads. If we did that, we would be repeating a tax which raised a lot more than this Government seem to be prepared to raise from their banker friends. Their present tax proposals would raise a limited amount from the bankers. Believe me, on the doorsteps people say that they still want to see the banks paying their fair share to put right the problems that they put us into in the first place.
We are lucky in Wales that we have a Labour Welsh Government. Welsh Government Ministers are implementing policies specifically to create jobs. We have spoken about creating jobs through a bankers’ bonus tax. The Welsh Government are creating 4,000 jobs with the limited finances that they have. It is specifically a young person’s jobs programme, with an emphasis on the private sector because we recognise that a much greater emphasis on the private sector is needed. We recognise that we are too dependent on the public sector.