Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she is “under no illusions” about the scale of the challenge after the UK economy flatlined in July for the second month in a row, according to the latest official figures. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00I'm under no illusions about the scale that this new government faces in fixing the economy.
00:07After 14 years of economic stagnation, we're not going to be able to turn everything around
00:13in one month or indeed in one budget.
00:16But today, in welcoming the new investment from Amazon Web Services in the UK,
00:22in data centres, in good jobs paying decent wages and helping people train with those technical skills,
00:29is about the prize that is in offer if we can bring stability back to the economy
00:33and work in partnership with business to rebuild our country and make it better off.
00:38And that is what I'm in this business for.
00:40We faced a situation when I became Chancellor that there was a £22bn black hole in the public finances this year.
00:48That meant we had to make difficult decisions, tough decisions, to get a grip of those public finances
00:54so that we could bring stability back to the economy.
00:57These weren't decisions that I wanted to make, they weren't decisions that I expected to make,
01:01but in the circumstances that we faced, it was absolutely right to make sure
01:06that our public finances were on a firmer footing because only through doing that
01:11do we have the chance to bring stability back to our economy
01:14and start to grow the economy after 14 years of stagnation.