The Commons returned last week and I returned to the crucial issue of economic policy from which so much else flows.
I told the Commons that the fine words of the Government's plan for growth are undermined by ministers systematically reducing our economy's capacity.
Ideologically driven by a quest to reduce the public sector, they have relentlessly pressed one single policy button - deficit reduction. In Gateshead and the North-East, the Government's policy is looking very much like a scorched-earth strategy.
Draconian and disproportionate spending cuts have this year alone reduced grants to the 12 local authorities in the North East by £84 per person compared with only £5 in the 12 least-deprived local authorities in the South.
The Government has reduced resources for regional development in our region by at least two thirds which has been replaced by as-yet-unfunded and as-yet-totally-impotent local enterprise partnerships although the PM said we need special support to rebalance our economy. More like the support given to a hanging man - a rope.
Many businesses that I speak to in the Team Valley trading estate, which employs about 20,000 people in the private sector, complain about the pace and depth of cuts. They are impacting on their order books because many of them supply the public sector.
Unemployment in the region now stands at 142,000 which is over one in ten of the working population. The parties in government clearly believe that unemployment is a price worth paying.
The North East is part of England and part of the United Kingdom, but we are being treated disproportionately badly by this Government's economic policies, which is acknowledged by right-wing groups as well as Labour.
The Government's plan is simply not working, but is inflicting enormous damage on the north. It is stifling and strangling our economy, not rebalancing it. Oblivious to the consequences, the Government presses on blindly with plan A: deficit reduction. Tens of thousands of jobs destroyed, one million young people unemployed, the poorest and most vulnerable paying the most. It is quite clear that we are not all in this together.
Newcastle Chronicle and Journal
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