Yes, I can. It is absolutely obvious: we were in the middle of a very deep recession, which the hon. Gentleman seems conveniently to have forgotten. Of course the number of unemployed people has gone up, but the previous Labour Government helped all sorts of other people back into work—365,000 lone parents, for example. If he would care to look at a map of where incapacity benefit and ESA claimants live, he will see that it looks like a map charting the industrial revolution in the 18th century. Those benefit costs clearly reflect the overhanging legacy of the decline of heavy industry. It is totally unreasonable and unfair to punish the people who happened to work in heavy industry.
Once again, we come to the issue of unemployment. We in the north-east have the highest rate of unemployment in the entire country—9.9%. We have seven people chasing every job vacancy. Whether the gap between the increase for a person on £25,000 a year and the increase for a person on JSA is £4.30 or £4.20 will make no material difference to people’s capability or willingness to find a job, which is why we need a completely different approach to job creation. My constituents want to go back to work.