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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I want to use the brief time that I have to talk about the effect that regional pay will have on my constituency in the north-east. Regional pay fixes the wrong problem and addresses the symptom, not the cause, of some of the problems in our region. The pay gap in the north-east is not the result of a thriving public sector but the legacy of industrial decline and the loss of high-wage jobs in recent decades. The biggest employer in Middlesbrough now is not the steel industry or the chemical industry but the university, which is investing in skills and the future of our young people. That is the right balance for us at the moment. We need to improve skills and build new enterprise, and we cannot do that by cutting public sector pay. What the Government are doing is classic policy wonkery. They have found an idea from a think-tank and are going to implement it with no research, no investigation and no long-term consideration of its impact.