Europe

Debate between Richard Drax and Alison McGovern

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I am tempted to give way but I will make some progress before I do.

Let us not forget the real issues. As I said, what matters to my constituents at the moment is the fact that our local authority has been cut to the bone and we are losing hundreds and hundreds of jobs. We are worried about employment and having a well-functioning economy on Merseyside where people have the money in their pockets to afford the prices in the shops. That is what people are really concerned about.

Because my time is limited and I have only four minutes left, I want to focus on a particular problem in Europe that I would have hoped we could all try to work together to deal with. This is timely, I hope, because yesterday a report by the Work Foundation demonstrated not only that youth unemployment is a significant problem on the continent of Europe but that the UK’s unemployment is higher than the European average, third only to Greece and Spain, and that we have youth unemployment that is higher than the OECD average. In yesterday’s Treasury questions, I asked how the Government planned to tackle the fact that their own predictions from the Department for Work and Pensions demonstrate that they have increased by 31,000 the number of young people to whom we will be paying jobseeker’s allowance by the end of this Parliament. We have the wrong economic plans. This problem cuts across the whole continent of Europe, and we ought to work together with our European partners to try to solve it. Considering this question helps to enlighten the debate about what we should do in Europe.

We need to focus on two things in the light of this problem. First, we need to rebalance the economy of Europe.

[Richard Drax]

: (South Dorset): Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison McGovern]

Briefly, if the hon. Gentleman wants to answer the question of what the Government should do about Europe.

[Richard Drax]

Just as a matter of observation, when talking about losing jobs and all the things the hon. Lady is mentioning, is it not the case that many more millions of people are out of work in Europe because this whole European federalism dream—we can call it what we like—is going horribly wrong? It is not just a UK matter; it is about what we are trying to live with, and we just cannot do it.

[Alison McGovern]

To help the hon. Gentleman, let me point out that what went horribly wrong was that the financial services industry invested in complicated products that it told us would help to manage risk, but it turned out that they made the risks worse. That sparked a financial crisis, and that has led to the problems that I have been describing.

We need a rebalancing of our European economy, and we need to think about how we can address the significant problem of inequality that is being created. In a recent Mansion House speech, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he was not in favour of a stimulus because it would lead to leakage in relation to imports. An EU-wide plan therefore makes sense, because we are part of a trading bloc and we should be working together to improve our shared economy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), who is sadly no longer in his place, mentioned state aid rules to rebalance areas of the economy that use high technology. It makes sense to work with our European colleagues on rebalancing.

Some commentators have advanced the idea of a youth contract whereby we could use unused structural funds for a European youth guarantee. I would argue that in order to tackle youth unemployment we need to learn the lessons of the projects proposed by the best of our town halls in the UK and the best countries around the world that have used active labour markets to tackle these problems. If there are funds available in Europe, we should work together with colleagues to get them to the heart of the problem.