Welfare Reforms and Poverty

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I reinforce the point my hon. Friend is making about people wanting to work? I held a jobs fair in Liverpool in October last year, to which more than 3,000 people desperate for jobs or apprenticeships came. I want to support what my hon. Friend said about the overwhelming majority of the people who are unemployed in his constituency and mine desperately wanting work.

[Steve Rotheram]

I agree, and I support the sentiments behind my hon. Friend’s holding of that fantastically successful jobs fair and the sentiments of the ordinary people we speak to. Sometimes we in this place see everything through the prism of what happens in London, and that is wrong. Out in our constituencies the reality is very different from the growth we sometimes see not across the board in London and the south-east, but in certain parts of this end of the country.