Today I’ve been in Southampton with Maria Hutchings, our PPC in Eastleigh, chairing a regional forum on the economic crisis and helping Maria launch Eastleigh's own job club.
As you will have seen from Chris Grayling's earlier blog post, David Cameron, my Shadow Cabinet colleagues and I have each hosted a forum in different cities up and down the country sharing our Party’s plans for how to get Britain working again as well as getting valuable feedback from the business community.
The reality is that the UK isn’t alone in facing serious economic challenges, but Gordon Brown’s approach has meant our country is not as well placed as our competitors to weather the storm.
His decision not to fix the roof when the sun was shining means it’s likely that we will suffer worse in Britain than in most other countries. According to the IMF, the UK economy will be the worst hit in the G7 group of major economies and part of the reason for that is Gordon Brown has left us entering the downturn with a bigger budget deficit than more than 100 counties- including Kazakhstan and Uganda. With that in mind it’s horrifying to think that Labour intend to take our national debt up to £1trillion – all of which has to be repaid.
It was realisations like this which fired up over 80 people to turn out on a cold winter Tuesday to the home of Hampshire cricket, The Rose Bowl, to share their thoughts and hear our plans.
There was a feeling that Labour’s plans simply aren’t working. The painful reality is that businesses are still closing, bank recapitalisation hasn’t got credit flowing again, and the VAT cut hasn’t stimulated spending.
In contrast the Conservatives have pledged to abolish income tax on savings for basic rate taxpayers, raise pensioners personal allowance by £2000 to £11,490, and get credit flowing and help safeguard jobs with a £50billion national loan guarantee scheme.
For small businesses particularly, we want to help cash flow by delaying VAT bills for six months, reduce employment costs for small businesses by cutting National Insurance and get companies hiring again with a tax break for new jobs. All of this will be monitored over the long term by an office for budget responsibility.
Southampton is one of many places which is really feeling the economic strain - unemployment is up 56pc with retail, manufacturing and construction sectors all suffering. But one ray of light is the job club Maria Hutchings is launching in Eastleigh.
Clubs like this will offer training, CV writing and other helpful skills in order to help mentoring and supporting people who are searching for new jobs.
Now I am dashing back home to finish the last of the name-tape labelling as the children go back to school tomorrow. If anyone can suggest how to keep name tapes in socks please do let me know!
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