I will send the hon. Gentleman the anthology of Chris Leslie’s speeches, because I am sure that he will be keen to find out every occasion—in 2013, 2014 and 2015—on which I have talked about productivity. I have been talking about it for a very long time. We must not think of it as simply a parliamentary issue. The CBI has emphasised the importance of higher productivity as the only way to secure long-term and sustainable wage growth. In the words of the Governor of the Bank of England,
“productivity growth—doing more with less—is the key determinant of income growth. Our shared prosperity depends on it.”
As Paul Krugman famously put it:
“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.”
We need a cross-party approach to the challenge.