Speeches by Reeves.

“There are more people in employment now than there were when Labour came into office. Partly, that reflects a reduction in the inactivity rate. I think there have only been three years in the last 50 years where the employment rate has been higher than it is today. It is, of course, welcome that people are putting them…”

“Thank you very much for that story. I think all of us will have in our mind somebody we have met. I remember meeting a woman a long way from my constituency, down on the south coast in Worthing. Between her and her husband they had five or six jobs; they had a young child and lived in private rented accommodation. The …”

“I think you have to take into account the impact that it will have on employees as consumers. If you have got more money in your pocket, that is more money to spend on your local high street and in your local business. This argument played out when the last Labour Government introduced the national minimum wage in the …”

“With respect, Mr Glen, we saw the number of people not in education, employment or training under the last Conservative Government increase by more than 100,000. That was not because of greater protections at work and increases in people’s wages; in fact, living standards went backwards in the last Parliament. I just d…”

“Two million pounds. Those are all highly progressive measures, and you can see that in all the distributional analysis that the Treasury and others have done. We have done the things that we want to do as a Government, but obviously we will always keep these under review. The other thing I should say we have done, whic…”

“If you look at the OBR forecast and the things the OBR have taken into account, they have taken into account, for example, our increase in capital spending. As I say, that will have a positive impact on the size of the economy. The OBR have also taken into account some of our planning reforms and are saying that they h…”

“Apart from it gives people greater security. If you know that you will get sick pay from day one, that means you have a bit more confidence to spend the money—”

“I wouldn’t say that they are medium-term measures, because they are things that are coming in this year. Let me address employment, and then energy. The youth guarantee scheme that I announced in the Budget last year comes in in the next couple of months, and that includes the job guarantee for young people who have be…”

“I will say it then. [Laughter.] We have to design the scheme and make sure it functions properly.”

“I think you have to look at these things in the round, because if you are a worker on a zero-hours contract and you do not know next week how many hours you are going to get, it is very difficult to be able to plan anything for the future, and it is very difficult to spend money because you have to build up precautiona…”

“We have got to grow the economy, and that is the No. 1 mission of this Government, but it has got to be felt in the pockets of ordinary people in Worthing, in Hackney, in Leeds West and Pudsey—in all parts of the country. That means more good jobs, paying decent wages, that you can afford to raise a family on. That is …”

“What I would say is that we are much too early, less than two weeks into the conflict, to have any certainty about what things would look like when the next energy price cap is determined at the end of May, for July, and we will work flat out to try and de-escalate this conflict and crucially, from an economic perspect…”

“Let me give you a couple of examples. Some companies are saying that you can only buy a larger quantity; they won’t sell in small quantities, whereas at the moment many people want to top up a little bit at the higher price, but not to fill up their whole tank. So we are looking at some of those market practices, which…”

“And I would say to businesses providing heating oil that it is not right to say that you will only sell in large quantities at the moment. That is not fair on customers, and I would encourage consumers to push back and to shop around in circumstances where they are being told they can only buy a large quantity at a ver…”

“As I have already confirmed, we are looking at all eventualities, but the root cause of this is the challenge in getting oil and gas out of the middle east, so the best way to deal with this is to address that at the root.”

“I know that is not an option for some people, if they are out of heating oil. That is why we are working very rapidly with the Competition and Markets Authority on a range of issues. My colleague the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has already had a number of meetings in the last couple of days, and is meeting MPs.…”

“Last year we were the fastest growing European country in the G7, and that is also forecast to be the case this year; but the truth is that growth, both here and around the world, especially in the advanced economies, is not as strong as we would like it to be, which is why I have always said that growth is the No. 1 m…”

“It is absolutely part of the strategy. It is a partnership approach between Government and business. There are some things that business cannot do. Businesses do not fund the basic R&D. They do not fund the universities, the skills or the health service, which makes sure we have a healthy workforce.”

“Yes.”

“We have now funded it in the spring forecast. That is in addition to funding previously allocated.”