I very much share the deep concern expressed by my hon. Friend about the figures published yesterday. I hope the Chancellor will start to pay attention to the effect that his economic plan is having on people throughout the country but, I agree, particularly in the north-east, where unemployment is above 10%, which is a shocking figure and spells deep trouble for the long-term entrenchment of unemployment. I will come to that shortly.
As we have heard so often from this out-of-touch Chancellor, he is not for turning, despite the fact that the consequence of his economic failure means that Government borrowing is rising, not falling, with the Tory-led coalition set to borrow £245 billon more than it forecast in autumn 2010. His promise to balance the books by 2015 will not be met and the national debt will not fall until 2017-18 at the earliest. Who knows how many times that will need to be pushed back before the Chancellor realises that his plan is not working?
Of course, that dire situation has led to the downgrading of Britain’s triple A rating by Moody’s and the more recent decision by Fitch to place the UK on rating watch negative, both of which had been prized by the Chancellor and used as cover for the austerity measures he introduced back in 2010.
At a time when living standards are being squeezed, average earnings are rising at their lowest rate since the end of 2009, Government borrowing is up, growth forecasts have been downgraded again, the public services on which people rely are being cut or threatened up and down the country, and ordinary people are being asked to pay the price for the Chancellor’s economic failure, what we needed was a Budget that was on the side of ordinary, hard-working people and families, increasing numbers of whom are clearly struggling to make ends meet.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) noted, unemployment is rising again. What we needed was a Budget that would back Labour’s jobs guarantee, using money raised from the tax on
bank bonuses to fund a guaranteed job—a real job—for every young person who has been out of work for a year or more. I am not sure whether Government Members have had a chance to analyse the long-term unemployment figures published yesterday, but I can tell them that in March this year 167,345 adults over the age of 25 had been claiming jobseeker’s allowance for more than 24 months. Let me repeat that figure: 167,345 adults had been out of work for more than two years, compared with 84,765 in February 2012 and 52,895 in February 2011. That is a disturbing rise of 97% since February 2012 and 216% since February 2011.
Targeted and urgent action is required if the unemployment situation is not to become dangerously entrenched. We believe that it is a totally unacceptable state of affairs and that action is needed now to stop people being put on the scrap heap and left there, as they were under the previous Conservative Government—and, of course, so that we do not continue building up long-term costs for the taxpayer.
What we needed from the Budget was a reversal of the Government’s decision to stop tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 being limited to 20% to fund Labour’s compulsory jobs guarantee for long-term unemployed adults.