Oral Answers to Questions

William Bain Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The figures cited are certainly not mythological; they have been arrived at independently by Government Departments and other researchers. It is not difficult to work out the economic value, given that the European Union, whatever its flaws and its present difficulties, is the world’s largest borderless single market, with more than 500 million consumers. It is also by far the largest destination for goods and services produced in this country, for the simple reason that we are a European country located in the European hemisphere.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

T13. The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show a rise in youth unemployment of 30,000 compared with the previous quarter. May I offer the Deputy Prime Minister the opportunity to have a deathbed conversion tomorrow and to support Labour’s proposed bank bonus tax, which would help to get tens of thousands of young people into decent jobs?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is—how can I put this politely?—brave of Labour to select jobs as the subject of its Opposition day debate. It is the party that crashed the economy in the first place. Youth unemployment is lower today than it was when the hon. Gentleman’s party left office. We have created countless more apprenticeships than Labour made available, and 1.8 million more people are in work now than when the Labour Government left office. Inequality, income inequality and relative child poverty are lower under this Government. He might not like the facts, but they speak for themselves.