Oral Answers to Questions

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is completely right in his support for the midlands engine. That is why we are investing another £200 million from the getting building fund into the midlands engine region. I will be happy to write to him in the next few days about what we are doing for levelling up in the midlands.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Last week, the Chancellor made the political choice to write off 1 million jobs as unviable. There are more than 1,000 jobs at risk in my constituency of Birkenhead, and 141,000 jobs at risk in the north-east. This would be unemployment on a scale even worse than under Thatcher. Why do the Prime Minister and the Chancellor think that that is a price worth paying?

[The Prime Minister]

That is completely to misrepresent what the Chancellor is trying to do. As I have just told the House, we have already put £190 billion into supporting livelihoods, people and families. We are going to continue to put our arms around the people of this country. The most important thing is to get the economy moving and get people into work, and, at the same time, to keep kids in school, but the only way we can do that is if we suppress the virus in the way that the Government have set out, with the local lockdown measures that we have announced and the national measures that, I hope, are the subject of cross-party support.