Unemployment

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Treasury – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 13 May 1999.

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Photo of Gordon Brown Gordon Brown The Chancellor of the Exchequer 12:00, 13 May 1999

The biggest threat to jobs in any sector would be the pursuit of the wrong macro-economic policies—the policies that were pursued under the previous Government. I think that the hon. Gentleman agrees. There will be no return to stop-go, boom-and-bust policies. We have kept inflation low, we have made the Bank of England independent, and we have set tough fiscal disciplines. All those disciplines are now yielding results in terms of both the inflation rate and the growth path of the economy, but we have still to have some answers from the Opposition. They oppose Bank of England independence. They oppose all the measures that we are taking that are to do with employment—the minimum wage, the working families tax credit and the new deal. They do not have an economic policy and, sometimes, I wonder whether the Liberal Democrats do.