There is very good news today from the IMF which puts the UK as one of the fastest growing economies in the advanced world at 2.9%. This is great news for Portsmouth as more jobs will be created and we must make sure that we are at the front of any investment particularly in the dockyard.
I am delighted that Asda, one of our biggest supermarkets in the city, have announced they will create up to 12,000 new jobs as part of a five year expansion plan and I hope that includes Portsmouth.
Creating more jobs by cutting business taxes is a key part of our long-term economic plan - giving more hardworking people the security of a regular pay packet they can bring home to their families plus the increase in the personal allowance means that people will be getting an average £750 more in their pay packet a year.
There are now more than 1.3 million more jobs since the last election - and the introduction last Sunday of the employment allowance, cutting businesses’ jobs tax by up to £2,000, will help create even more.
We want Britain to be a ‘full employment’ economy with the highest employment rate in the G7. The only way to achieve this is to stick to our long-term economic plan, which is making hundreds of thousands of hardworking families more financially secure and better able to plan for the future.