13:11 Steve Barclay (Conservative)

Our plans also create new jobs, injecting new certainty and confidence in the housing market by increasing the stamp duty threshold to £500,000 for first-time buyers. That will drive growth and support across housebuilding and property sectors. It also builds on other schemes, such as creating green jobs through a £2 billion green homes grant, saving households hundreds of pounds a year on their energy bills, and through our £1 billion programme to make public buildings, including schools and hospitals, decarbonised. Together, they are all a part of the £640 billion capital investment in economic recovery, job creation and revitalising our national infrastructure over the next five years.

Let me close with one final observation. In the first phase of our economic response to coronavirus, we supported people, businesses and public services, with support totalling £190 billion. In the second phase, our plan for jobs is protecting, supporting and creating jobs, and as we enter the third phase our economic policy will be driven not just by responding to the immediate crisis, but by ensuring that we level up, spread opportunity, tackle climate change and make sure our response to the pandemic is not just about recovery but renewal. I commend the amendment to the House.

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13:33 Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)

Where the Scottish Government have the power, they have acted. The Scottish Government have spent £4 billion on covid, with over £2.3 billion for businesses. That is above the Barnett consequentials allocated to us. The Scottish Government published their response to the recommendations of the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery on 5 August. They are acting to protect jobs by developing and delivering sector-led recovery plans, working with industry leadership groups, trade unions and others, starting with the construction sector, which is coming back from its furlough period. They are supporting jobs through the covid-19 transition training fund. Through the programme for government, they are supporting a national mission to create new jobs, good jobs and green jobs, which includes investing £60 million to support up to 20,000 young people into jobs. There is the £100 million green jobs fund, investment in decarbonisation and the Unlocking Ambition programme. They are also using the national performance framework to promote equality and to respect, protect and fulfil human rights.

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13:53 Darren Jones (Labour)

British businesses are up for that challenge, from bringing forward R&D projects and decarbonising to pulling together in the national interest. This pandemic has shown the powerful partnership that can be formed between Government, businesses, workers and unions during times of crisis. We should try to hold on to that collective endeavour as we seek to recover and build the British economy, but that requires Ministers to step up to that challenge, to answer the questions that are being posed of them, and to take the necessary action to protect jobs and businesses across the whole of the country.

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14:23 Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must take urgent action towards their target of net zero carbon, and that now is the time to invest in the transition away from carbon-emitting industries and create new green jobs?

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15:09 Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)

Last Saturday, I joined the climate change demonstration outside the Senedd in Cardiff, and today I stood alongside trade union colleagues outside Parliament at the launch of the SOS for jobs campaign. These two actions are inextricably linked. In the 1980s, under a previous Tory Government, my constituency of Cynon Valley suffered terrible job losses. We do not want to see this repeated. It is estimated that at least 2.5 million people in the UK will be out of work by the end of 2020, unless Government action is taken to prevent this.

There is a golden opportunity here to repurpose industry to address climate change and to support our public services. There have been 100,000 redundancies in local government in the last 10 years. We need more social care and NHS workers. What are the Government doing to address this? We could create 1.24 million jobs in two years, given adequate investment to develop the green economy. At the heart of this are workers and their families, and as one of our local innovation workers said, “I’ve always been prepared to learn new skills. I come from a mining background, but there are no pits left. That’s the past, but I now fear for the future.” That is the human cost of not investing.

Well, U-turns are something this Government are very adept at, and we need a U-turn from them now: extend the furlough scheme, trial a four-day week, invest in green energy and in our public services, and work with others to prepare an economic plan for jobs that gives our workers, their children, their communities and this planet hope for the future.

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15:29 Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)

I am proud that the Government stepped in when people needed them most. Now, they are leading the charge to safely get the country back on track—back to trading, back to creating jobs, back to work. Millions are at risk of becoming unemployed as a result of the potential economic standstill if we continue to suffocate our economy. Rather than squashing growth and keeping jobs in suspension, we are focused on encouraging consumers to create that economic activity, with the eat out to help out scheme, the green homes grant and the stamp duty cut. Our steps do not suspend jobs; they create jobs. There is so much more potential for job creation in emerging sectors such as decarbonisation. This is our chance to build on the environmental benefits of the lockdown and promote a green economy.

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15:40 Catherine West (Labour)

I think most of us agree that we are facing a triple whammy at the moment, with a public health crisis in the guise of covid, an economic crisis in which Brexit has already cost our economy billions of pounds, and climate change, which will eventually cost us a lot and is currently costing lives as well as other things that the Treasury may not be making a record of. That is certainly an expensive project as well. We are in a recession. We know that GDP fell by 20.4% in the second quarter of 2020—that is 20.4%, not 2.4%—which is the largest confirmed fall of any economy in Europe and the G7, so we are facing really tough times.

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