Autumn Forecast

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Of course, I have enormous sympathy with anyone who faces a job loss, but we are creating the economic conditions where they will be able to find a new job, I hope. There is support from the welfare system. We expect more than 1 million new jobs to be created over the coming years. I make this observation to the hon. Lady, who was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the previous Chancellor: if the Labour Government had been re-elected in May, they would be cutting billions and billions of pounds from public spending, this year, next year and in the years ahead. That was in the March Budget plans, even if they are not the plans that the shadow Chancellor is sticking to. If the hon. Lady is able to find a way of cutting many, many billions of pounds—£40-odd billion—from public spending without in any way affecting the local government settlement, she should please let me know.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and his will to reform business regulation. In the course of that reform, will the onerous and costly reporting to Government culture to which businesses must adhere be fully scrutinised?

[Mr Osborne]

The short answer to my hon. Friend is yes. One of the specific aspects that we want to look at is how Government should be helping businesses grow, rather than standing in the way of that. That includes procurement for Government. The Government spend too much of their money on the largest companies in the country and not enough on some of the smaller companies. That is one of the things that we seek to improve.