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Autumn Forecast

I am very grateful to my noble friend. I can confirm the figures that he quoted. The relevance is that, for all the rebalancing of the economy that we are doing and the very significant rebalancing of the welfare system, the shift of jobs out of the public sector is now very significantly below what was achieved even within the past 20 years in the early 1990s. Therefore, we should have confidence in the productive capability of the private sector to absorb that number of jobs many times over. I can only stand by the figures for the net increase of employment that are set out by the OBR in its tables.