Youth Unemployment

Debate between Toby Perkins and Liam Byrne

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

Any increase in vacancies is good news, but 40,000 is not an enormous increase, and when private sector employment is dead flat and public sector redundancies are mounting, I am afraid that it poses serious questions about whether unemployment will continue to rise over the next couple of years.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, worrying as the youth unemployment figures are, the complacency demonstrated by the Government in debate after debate is even more worrying. We heard today from the Prime Minister that youth unemployment has been a problem for a long time, but the Government’s policies are making the situation worse. In my constituency, 1,100 people will potentially lose their jobs as a result of Auto Windscreens going into administration this week. All we hear from the Government is complacency, rather than an admission that their policies are making this major problem worse.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight his constituency case, which has caused concern to families up and down the country. We saw figures today showing that earnings growth is now about half the rate of inflation. At a time when the jobs market is weaker, that will contribute to a tighter and tighter squeeze on working families over the coming months.

Finance Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Liam Byrne

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I do not know what figures the hon. Gentleman is looking at, but in the March Budget the fiscal stimulus provided by automatic stabilisers was about 4.4% of GDP. The idea that a fiscal stimulus was not sustained into 2010 is fantasy.

[Toby Perkins]

I should like to bring my right hon. Friend back to what he was talking about—unemployment, housing, the impact on people and how the last Labour Government protected people on the ground. Is it not strange that there seems to be no acknowledgment from those on the Government Benches about how many extra people are in work and still have the homes for which they have worked so hard all their lives? There seems to be no acknowledgment from the Conservative party that that issue is worth worrying about. Perhaps that is because they were not the people who lost their jobs or were in danger of losing their homes.

Finance Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Liam Byrne

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I look forward to the hon. Gentleman telling us later how the increase in VAT is going to support the argument that he is trying to prosecute. I hope that he will also reflect on the cost of this Budget to jobs. The official figures for job cuts as a result of this Budget are bad enough, but the real figures are even worse. We have already watched the extraordinary spectacle of the Office for Budget Responsibility tell the Chancellor that employment will be 100,000 lower as a result of Budget measures, but then the real figures were published in The Guardian—not in this House, but in The Guardian—from which we learned that secret Treasury papers say that the Budget will cost 1.3 million jobs over the next five years. When the Chancellor stood at that Dispatch Box a couple of weeks ago, he told us that he would not hide things in the “small print” and that he would give it to us “straight”; he was so straight and so open that he kept the Treasury advice out of the Budget altogether. Yet even that picture might not reflect the entirety of the Budget’s impact.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Liberal Democrats’ comments would have more credibility if they had not spent the six or eight weeks before the general election arguing very accurately and articulately against the very Budget they have just helped to deliver?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some Front-Bench Labour Members believe in redemption, and we have not given up on the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). That is why we are looking forward so much to hearing his contribution later this evening. [Interruption.] I hope he is not going to dispel the image I have of his virtue and integrity.