Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Barnett (Labour). It was answered on Thursday, 27 October 2011.

Economy: Inflation and Unemployment

Question: My Lords, I hope that the modest attempts that the Treasury is making to help the unemployment situation are successful. However, does not the Minister accept, if he wants to be honest with the House, the plain fact that the deficit reduction plan overshadows all those minor measures, and unemployment continues to rise? I do not expect him to be able to announce what the Chancellor is going to do in the near future. However, given the change of circumstances around the economy, will he at least tell us that the Chancellor is considering, without changing the plan, at the very least putting off some of those measures to later years and bringing forward some of the infrastructure and capital expenditure plans, which would help to reduce the terrible unemployment that is blighting so much of the country?

Answer: My Lords, the first clear objective of the Government is to stick to the fiscal reduction plan that we have set to make sure that the UK’s interest rates remain low, so that we are not in the position in which countries like Italy find themselves today. It is absolutely fundamental to growth that we keep interest rates low and stick to our fiscal discipline. Secondly, we must have monetary activism and credit easing, a combination of measures that the Bank of England has taken by extending the asset purchase scheme by £75 billion. The Chancellor has said that we will come forward with further credit easing measures in the autumn Statement. The third issue, which will further be addressed in the November Statement, is, critically, to press on with supply-side reforms that will underpin medium-term balanced growth. Those are the three clear strands of the Government’s policy to which we will stick.

Secondary information