16 Mar PM sees ‘big problem’ in lack of workers to fill jobs, says David Davis MP
PRIME Minister Rishi Sunak sees a shortage of workers as potentially hampering economic growth, according to MP David Davis.
The former Brexit Secretary said that the PM raised the issue in a chat the pair had last week.
He told GB News: “I had a conversation with Rishi Sunak last week, he said ‘David, the big problem is having enough employees, people coming into the workforce’.
“We’ve got to get people back in and that’s obsessed them, and rightly so.”
In a discussion with Bev Turner and Andrew Pierce, he said: “I’m a low tax Tory, and we haven’t got that but what they’re doing is really, and bear in mind is a recovery from what happened last year.
“It’s a recovery from Ukraine, it’s a recovery from Covid, some would argue from Brexit. I’d agree with that.
“It’s been a very dramatic few years, and the economy has been hit and frankly, not just ours.
“Every time I talk to either Hunt or Sunak, they say we want to get taxes down, we just have to get over this hump and get the growth going, because once you get the growth going, that enables tax reduction and that becomes a virtuous circle.”
On criticism that the Budget was “boring”, he said: “The Chancellor has got a sort of narrow track to follow, and remember some of the good things which weren’t actually in the Budget, but around the Budget.
“That’s the improvement in the growth numbers for this year and the inflation number coming down dramatically from 10% to 2.9%.
“That wouldn’t have happened if the currency had gone off a cliff, because we import lots of things so stability is important.
“And frankly, as far as I’m concerned, the boring and calm is at least the first virtue.”
He added: “The pension is the big one. This is money that people have saved over 45 years.
“They put their money in and their companies have put money in as well, you forget that, and it builds up to over a million.
“Now we’re talking about doctors, we’ve probably also talking about headteachers and middle to senior civil servants and local government officials, mostly in the public sector because it’s filed salary pensions, and they are very, very expensive.”
