Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have written out to 800,000 families. There has been a huge advertising campaign and this has been properly covered right across the media, but I have to say that it is absolutely extraordinary, in a week when Labour is complaining about difficult welfare decisions for people who are in work and people who are out of work, that Labour Members also want to make a priority of opposing taking away child benefit from people earning £100,000 or £150,000. They have really got to start taking some responsible decisions about how we deal with our deficit and get our economy under control.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the business men—the entrepreneurs—and the staff who work at the jobcentre in my constituency, whose efforts over the last two and a half years have ensured that unemployment in Selby and Ainsty is down by a quarter since the last election?

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly join my hon. Friend in that. The people in our jobcentres up and down the country do an excellent job helping people to find work and to make sure that they get all the help they need. The fact is that the unemployment rate today is lower than the rate that we inherited at the last election. Over the last year, job creation in Britain was faster than in any other G7 country. We still have a long way to go to rebalance our economy and to get the growth in the private sector that we need, but we are on the right track—1 million new private sector jobs over the last two years, the fastest rate of new business creation for decades. There are good signs that the economy is rebalancing. We need to encourage that by staying on top of our deficit and getting it down, rather than just giving in on every decision, as we have seen today from the Labour party.