Business of the House

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Following the excellent comments by our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government about the need to abolish council non-jobs, may I urge my right hon. Friend to grant a debate on this subject so that we can all give our suggestions as to which politically correct council non-jobs should be abolished? Will he ensure that it is a full day’s debate, because I think that he will find that there are plenty of them?