Business of the House

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend has brought to the attention of the House a very important issue, namely the very wide discrepancies in life expectancy according to where people live and their socio-economic background, and which this Government want to reduce. I am not sure whether I can find time for a debate in the near future, but the Chair of the newly appointed Backbench Business Committee will have heard his plea. I will raise the issue with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and see whether we can get a response for my hon. Friend.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I was recently approached by the chamber of commerce in my constituency and told it was expecting a loss of 17,000 construction jobs as a result of public sector cuts. That was before what happened with BSF. May we have an urgent debate on the loss of public sector construction jobs as a result of what has happened with BSF?

[Sir George Young]

I am sure the hon. Lady knows that under the last Administration there was a forecast reduction in public sector jobs. So far as employment is concerned, as I said a moment ago we had a debate about this yesterday and the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), pointed out that it was forecast that there would be an increase of 1.5 million jobs over the next few years. I hope that some of those will be in the construction industry. In the first statement that we made on public expenditure, we put back in a sum of money for social housing. Housing is an important ingredient in our programme. I hope that as the economy recovers there will be more work in the construction industry, building the houses that our constituents need.