I am delighted to respond to this debate on productivity, because it is absolutely central to our long-term plan to fix the economy. My ministerial colleagues at the Treasury have been candid about the scale of the productivity challenge, so in some ways I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has said, but this is a challenge that the UK has faced for decades, not “several years” as the motion suggests.
We have been very clear that increasing productivity is a key challenge in this Parliament for this Government: it will be a key focus of ours over the next five years. Indeed, the Chancellor noted as early as August 2010—very early on in the last Government—that our relatively low productivity was a drag to economic recovery, when he spoke at Bloomberg about the economy of the future.
The hon. Gentleman has said that productivity was not mentioned in the Budget, but I refer him to page 1—the very first page—of the Budget document.