A SENIOR Conservative councillor and local businessman has hit out at Bolton’s Labour MPs following their response to the latest fall in unemployment.

As reported in Thursday’s edition of The Bolton News, year on year joblessness fell by 37 per cent in the Bolton area.

Bolton West MP Julie Hilling said the figures gave a distorted view of the local picture saying that zero-hours contracts, low pay and agency deals were widespread and there were many people working part-time who wanted full time jobs.

Her views were echoed by Bolton North East MP David Crausby who also said it was important people taking up work would a full-time post on a “decent wage”.

However, Tory spokesman for economic regeneration, Cllr Martyn Cox, who has represented Westhoughton North for nine years, said: “This wasn’t the debate we were having three years ago.

“Then, Labour was saying what the government was doing was going to create mass unemployment.

“In fact the reverse has happened and we’ve now got one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe. The argument they were making proved to be false and the basis of this claim is ropey.

“It’s a remarkable performance when you compare it with our competitors in the Eurozone. I have taught economics and at the time I thought their claims were bizarre.

“It’s a fair point that some areas of the country are better than others. But it’s nowhere near as bad as Spain where unemployment among young people is at 50 per cent and in France the whole unemployment figure is 11.5 per cent, nearly double what ours is here.”

Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures showed nationally 694,000 more people are in jobs compared with this time last year. Employment increased by 112,000 over the last three months, mostly from people in full-time work.

In the north west, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said an average of 13,000 a week were finding jobs, with 96,000 more people in work compared with this time last year.