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Living Standards

No, I will not give way again. The fuel duty measures are important not only to commuters and consumers—parents trying to get their children to school and young people trying to go to work or get to job interviews— all of whom will be better off, but to firms in transport and logistics, which need to be able to invest more in their businesses, to grow them and to create more jobs. The Government are also working to protect the elderly, who have given so much already. Making sure that they get their winter fuel allowance and the right protection for their pension, as was announced yesterday, means that we are doing all we can, in the circumstances we inherited from the previous Government, to provide for the people who need help the most. To me, the key is to bring all that together—education and welfare reforms, and the work being done through the Treasury and BIS on taxation and apprenticeships—in an holistic approach. In that way, our country will be able to move forward and we will see the real improvement in living standards that we all want.