Jobs and Business

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:31 am on 10 May 2013.

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Photo of Kevan Jones Kevan Jones Shadow Minister (Defence) 11:31, 10 May 2013

I accept that.

If one looks at the debt of a millionaire in cash terms, of course it will be larger than that of someone who is earning the minimum wage. To compare the size of the UK economy to that of Greece takes no account of that.

We need to recognise who talked the economy up and who took the disastrous decision in those early days to take demand out of the economy. We were growing, as the shadow Business Secretary, my hon. Friend Mr Umunna, rightly said. That destructive early cut, along with talking the economy down, sucked confidence out of the economy. Getting that confidence back is very difficult. Clearly, many people, and certainly those in my constituency, are very cautious about what they are spending.

Let us have this debate based on the facts. I accept that we in the Labour party missed a trick. We were self-obsessed for nearly six months as we selected a new leader for the party, so we did not rebut the nonsense that was put out at the time.

The Business Secretary said, strangely, that the Queen’s Speech is not the mechanism for getting the economy going. I find that remarkable. This is a lost opportunity. The Queen’s Speech was so thin on substance that it could be marketed by WeightWatchers. There is nothing in it that will help the 20% of young people who are in long-term unemployment. My hon. Friend Jim Fitzpatrick spoke about a lost decade. That is so, and we need to remind the House that that has individual consequences. The 20% who are now unemployed—and their number is increasing—will have their lives affected for ever. We must recognise the human cost behind the statistics. The problem will not be solved for those individuals in the short term and will have long-term implications for constituents such as mine and those of my hon. Friend that will need to be addressed in the long term.