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Rishi Sunak has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030. On a trip to Poland, the prime minister said the extra billions will put Britain’s defence industry “on a war footing” – and Nato members cannot expect the US alone to foot the bill for defending the West. He also…
Chancellor George Osborne says new figures showing GDP growth of 0.7% show Britain’s economy is producing as much per head ‘as ever before’
Siobhan Kennedy
A week before the general election and in the week when the Tories are stressing that the economy is safe in their hands, today’s figures point to a marked slowdown.
The economy finally picked up momentum in 2013. But what is worrying for George Osborne about today’s GDP figures is how they suggest that momentum ebbing away over the last year.
Gary Gibbon
George Osborne’s response to news that Britain has recovered all the ground lost in the recession of 2008-09 speaks volumes of a government that believes it can win the election.
A UN committee says we should consider measures beyond GDP to really see how successful, wealthy and happy a nation is. Here’s why.
The UK economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the third quarter of 2013, the ONS announces.
Economics Editor Faisal Islam blogs on his meeting with George Osborne – and the five key areas where the chancellor has ‘refined’ his views on the economy.
The double-dip recession is deeper than originally feared as revised figures show a sharper decline in the economy in the first three months of 2012.
In the end, it wasn’t marginal. This morning GDP figures show Britain clearly back in recession, the dreaded double dip, with GDP in key one at -0.2 per cent.
My report yesterday on the GDP figures and Krishnan’s rather robust interview of the Chief Secretary of the Treasury has elicited some viewer feedback, and not just about my hard hat. Some correspondents felt we were talking down the economy by “arbitrarily” looking at the flat economy since the end of September, rather than 0.5 per cent growth in Q1 of this year.
Britain’s economy has recovered by just 0.5 per cent at the start of 2011, undermined by a big drop in construction, and Labour has seized upon the results to criticise Chancellor George Osborne.
“They are clearly disappointing figures but the statisticians tell us that the weather had a huge effect – we had the coldest December for 100 years, businesses were closed, people couldn’t get to work… So we’re not going to be blown off course by the bad weather.”
Gary Gibbon
Our Political Editor says the economists are unlikely to be offering any good news to the Government any time soon.
The Treasury tells FactCheck that Chancellor George Osborne “misspoke” when he said economic growth will be higher in every quarter in every year compared to the OBR’s June forecasts.