I will give way in a moment, but I just want to spend a little more time on the future jobs fund, because it is such a rich seam. I continue to ask the right hon. Member for East Ham to give us the list
of private sector companies that are signed up to his new scheme, but he has not come up with it. The interesting point is that councils from Merthyr Tydfil to Norfolk and from Tyneside to Wakefield have all complained about how difficult it is to get businesses to deliver the future jobs fund. None of them could find anyone to deliver it. In Barnsley only 7% of the jobs found were in the private sector, and in Birmingham the figure was only 2%.
I was a little intrigued by that, because I know that the right hon. Gentleman is an intelligent man—I have huge respect for him and thought that he was a very competent Minister—and it was unlike him, given how accurate he normally is, to come to the Dispatch Box and, when pressed on how many private sector jobs would come from the scheme, answer, “It is most likely to be in the private sector.” That is it. That is the calculation that the Opposition have made for this incredible programme. He believes that it is “most likely” that those jobs will be in the private sector, yet not a single private sector employer is interested in it.
It is small wonder that the shadow Leader of the House also failed to name a single business that had signed up to the jobs guarantee. When pressed about the vast number of jobs there would be in the private sector, the shadow Chancellor, in a forerunner to his problem with “Bill Somebody”, said:
“But if not, you can do it through the voluntary sector. If not, you have to have a final backstop: a public work scheme.”
That is what they have. He let the cat out of the bag. The reality is that high streets and businesses have now made their views clear about Labour’s “destructive anti-business mood”. The Institute of Directors has stated that,
“wage subsidies for employers are not the source of sustainable jobs”.
That is what this ridiculous programme would mean.