Mel Stride blamed GDP figures showing growth slowed between July and September on the Labour government “talking down of the economy”. UK economic growth slowed between July and September relative to the previous quarter, according to official data, in a blow to Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Very weak and worrying actually, so if you look at what happened in the first and second quarter, 0.7%, 0.5%, now 0.1%,
00:08America 0.7%, we're behind France and Germany this quarter.
00:13And I think what that speaks to is that when this government came into office it talked down the economy.
00:17Now that was all part of its plan to then go on and jack taxes up in the budget and talk about this black hole
00:23that has been debunked by the OBR, but the reality is I think we're seeing the consequences in part at least of that.
00:29But the talking down of the economy, if you look at those PMI surveys, the business confidence surveys,
00:34they started to weaken very considerably immediately after the government formed and started talking down the UK economy.
00:41What's worrying about the budget of course is that all the growth figures in there are lower across the forecast
00:47than the OBR was forecasting under ourselves back in the spring, and that's because they're loading businesses up
00:53with taxes like national insurance, employers' national insurance, which is going to mean lower wages,
00:58higher unemployment, lower growth, higher inflation, higher interest rates.
01:02So I think there are some real concerns about the future here.