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Comprehensive Spending Review

First, to put it in context, close to 200,000 jobs have been created in the last three months. Secondly, the Labour party's plans involved a head-count reduction of more than 400,000. It was accepted by Labour politicians during the election that there would be a head-count reduction and that there would be redundancies. This is what happens when a country loses control of its public finances. If we had been better managed over recent years—if the people doing my job before me had managed to avoid this record budget deficit, which is the largest in the G20—[Interruption.] Opposition Members keep saying that this is all to do with the international situation. They have not yet managed to explain to me why we were the worst affected in that international situation. We have to take some difficult decisions, but it will help if private sector recovery helps to create jobs. The number that the hon. Lady keeps using is a number from an independent body—the Office for Budget Responsibility—that she presumably regards as credible, since she is quoting it, but the OBR also forecast falling unemployment over the period. She cannot really use one forecast from the body and not the other.