BOROUGH MP Andrew Miller has defended the Chancellor of the Exchequer after the Tories attacked him over rising unemployment.

Mr Miller spoke during a Parliamentary debate on the Treasury and the Work & Pensions Department.

He was responding to Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, who said: 'Unemployment is rising in Britain when it is falling in most of our competitor countries and real living standards throughout the country are falling.

'According to figures the Government sneaked out this month, average earnings are not rising as fast as the current rate of inflation, and this is not a one-off.'

Mr Osborne added: 'Falling living standards, rising unemployment, excessive micro-management and a less competitive economy - what an epitaph to the Chancellor's decade at the Treasury.'

Mr Miller countered: 'It is Cheshire that I want to ask the Honourable Gentleman about.

'Is he aware that in 1997, when the Conservatives lost office, the percentage of unemployment in patches of my constituency was still in the mid-teens?

'Is he aware that unemployment in my constituency is now around 2%? Therefore, who is the failure?'

Mr Osborne replied: 'I am sure the Hon. gentleman will confirm that unemployment is now rising in Cheshire, as in the rest of the country.

'We have had the biggest rise in unemployment of any developed country in the world in the last year.'

Mr Osborne also accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of failing to manage the public services properly, saying: 'The question that haunts the Chancellor is how he could have spent so much and achieved so little.

'He has doubled the health service budget, but 60 hospitals face cutbacks, 106 community hospitals face closure and 20,000 front-line health jobs face the axe.'