2,057 of my constituents claimed Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) in May. That's down 33 or 1.6 per cent in the last month and 934 or 31.2 per cent on a year ago.

The news regarding youth unemployment is even better. Of the 2,057 Croydon Central residents claiming JSA in May, 465 were between the ages of 18 and 24. That's down 5 or 1.1 per cent in the last month but down 195 or 29.5 per cent on a year ago.

Unemployment in Croydon Central is now 886 or 30.1 per cent lower than when the Coalition came to power and youth unemployment is 305 or 39.6 per cent lower.

Across the country, more people are in work today than at any time in this country's history - 1.69 million more than when Labour left office. 345,000 more people are in work today than there were three months ago, the biggest increase in employment in a single quarter ever recorded. Each month when I tweet the latest good news on jobs, various Labour activists reply claiming that all these new jobs are part-time or zero-hour contracts. That is simply not true. Announcing these figures yesterday Nick Palmer of the ONS said “Nearly all the growth in employment is full-time employees”. Another way of measuring the progress we are making is to look at the number of people who are economically inactive. That’s now down to its lowest level since 1990.

There is absolutely no room for complacency. There are still far too many people out of work or in part time work when they would like a full time job. But these figures show that the Government was right to take tough choices to get the deficit under control. Labour opposed those tough choices - Ed Miliband said they would lead to a million more unemployed. They got it wrong when they were in government, borrowing too much money in the good times, and now we know they were wrong about how to clean up the mess too.