Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Valerie Vaz and George Osborne

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

According to the Office for National Statistics, unemployment in the west midlands has risen to 8.2%. Can the Chancellor explain why?

[Mr Osborne]

The statistics for the hon. Lady’s constituency show that unemployment is down 20%, youth unemployment is down 20% and long-term unemployment is down 20%. In the west midlands, during the boom years—the unsustainable boom—private sector employment actually fell. That points to what went wrong with the previous Government—they put all the bets on the City of London, the shadow Chancellor did not regulate it properly, it blew up and we are now retrieving the situation that he created.

Global Economy

Debate between Valerie Vaz and George Osborne

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Of course I agree that we need demand. I think that demand comes partly from confidence, and that confidence comes from economic stability. If we think of the difference between the statement that I have been able to make today in the House of Commons and the emergency statements and emergency budget cuts that many Finance Ministers have had to announce in the last two weeks, we have, in a nutshell, the reason why we made the right decisions last year to get ahead of the curve, and why so many other countries are now trying to catch up.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Can the Chancellor explain how relaxing planning controls will stimulate the economy when offices, houses and shops are already standing empty in my constituency?

[Mr Osborne]

Of course we need to fill vacant properties, but we also need to allow new development. I think that we all want to protect areas of outstanding natural beauty in our country, and I have a constituency in the green belt, but planning decisions in this country are so lengthy, so bureaucratic and so costly that almost every study of the British economy that has been commissioned in the last decade has identified planning as an obstacle to further economic development. I think that we need to simplify those planning controls so that we can—yes—protect the countryside, but also secure decisions in reasonable time that allow development to take place. That is why we have introduced the presumption of sustainable development into the planning system.