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Economic Recovery

It was only a passing reference because I have had only a sentence on that subject. However, on securing the recovery, there are many businesses in my constituency that will not have a recovery if they cannot get their goods and invoices out through the post. Reading yesterday’s Hansard, I found it rather curious that the Prime Minister said about the postal dispute that he would""urge people to go to ACAS when that becomes the right thing to do".—[Official Report, 21 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 904.]" Surely trying to ensure that everyone goes to ACAS without precondition to try to resolve such disputes must always be the right thing to do. I am not entirely sure what the Prime Minister meant by the rather curious line that he took. I am also surprised that the Government have not chosen to have a debate today on the dispute between the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England. How we can have an economic recovery when the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England are at loggerheads? Behind this debate is an assumption that a recovery is beginning. However, the Library has placed in the Vote Office the economic indicators for October 2009, a publication that makes worthwhile reading because it contains the Library’s figures. They are not partisan figures from a political party or independent commentator, but the Library’s figures. The economic indicators for October show that full-time employment has fallen by almost 700,000 over the year. There have never been so few people under 25 in employment in recent times. The UK economy has now been in recession since the third quarter of 2008. Also, the economy contracted in the second quarter of this year, compared to the first quarter, which was the fifth successive quarter of negative growth. However, the research paper shows that, although we are still in negative growth, France, Germany and Japan have emerged from recession. The paper also shows that manufacturing output decreased by 12.4 per cent. in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same quarter in 2008. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham mentioned, manufacturing industry has been getting into a desperate plight year on year. Total business investment decreased by 10.2 per cent. in the second quarter of 2009, compared with the previous quarter, and was 21.8 per cent. lower than in the second quarter of 2008. Productivity across the whole economy, measured by output per head, is estimated to have fallen in 2008, as compared with growth in 2007. In the three months to July 2009, total employment was 600,000 lower than a year earlier.