The shadow housing secretary says, "it's good the economy is growing because it's not been growing since Labour took over". Kevin Hollinrake's comments come after latest figures show that the economy grew by 0.1% in November says the economic "black hole" that Labour claims it inherited from the previous Conservative government is "self-inflicted" and was caused by pay rises given to public sector workers "without any negotiation, without any strings attached in terms of productivity". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Listen, it's good the economy's growing, because it's not been growing since Labour took over.
00:04In July, the UK was the fastest growing economy in the G7. Since then, it's become the slowest
00:11growing economy in the G7. So the last three months have been a net contraction in the size
00:16of the economy. Listen, if it's starting, if the economy's starting to recover from those
00:22huge tax increases, £25 billion of tax increases on business, there's more regulation that's coming
00:29down the track from Labour, from the government too, which again will hamper businesses' opportunity
00:35to invest and to recruit more people. Those are not good, but I do absolutely believe in the
00:41resilience of British businesses. It's they that drive the economy forward. It's not governments,
00:46it's not regulators. So businesses will survive, despite what Labour's doing, not because of it.
00:53That black hole was self-inflicted because of the pay rises they gave to the public sector
00:59and train drivers without any negotiation, without any strings attached in terms of productivity.
01:04That's where it came from. It's also created partially because they scrapped the Rwanda scheme,
01:09which would have stopped illegal migrants coming over the Channel. They scrapped that scheme.
01:14That was the deterrent. That would have saved us money. That created part of that black hole as
01:18well. It's totally self-inflicted. It's a complete nonsense. They've increased those taxes.
01:24They've increased spending because they want to pay back their union paymasters
01:31and because they want to put a huge amount of money into green projects instead of using
01:36our natural resources alongside the decarbonisation projects that we put in place.
01:41All those things come as a result of Labour's choices, not the legacy they got from us.
01:48One of the advantages of leaving the European Union is we can now do our own trade deals,
01:52which we could not before, with Australia, with New Zealand, with the Pacific countries and
01:58potentially with the USA, which would be a huge opportunity. It's already our biggest trading
02:03partner. If we entered into an EU customs agreement that would lock us out of trade
02:08deals from the rest of the world, that's not sensible.