Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says the latest GDP figures that show that 2023’s recession was slightly weaker than originally thought are a “testament to the resilience of the economy”. Figures released by the Office for National Statistic revealed the economy shrunk for two quarters in a row, but the total contraction over that six-month period dropped from 0.5% to 0.4%. 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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00:00 Well, these numbers confirm, I think, what we already knew, which is despite the Bank
00:04 of England predicting the longest recession in 100 years, in fact, GDP grew albeit marginally
00:11 last year. That's obviously very welcome, but one of the ways that we're going to help
00:16 that growth is by supporting families get back into work with a big childcare offer.
00:22 And what will be a hammer blow to those families is that just this week, Labour have said that
00:28 they may refuse to guarantee that free childcare for every child over nine months. That will
00:33 be a huge disappointment to many families.
00:35 Well, the Prime Minister's pledge last year was to halve inflation, and he delivered on
00:42 that. In fact, inflation has fallen from over 11% to 3.4%. Having done that, he then said
00:49 we would grow the economy. I don't think any of us were expecting the economy to actually
00:53 grow last year. The Bank of England wasn't, the Office of Budget Responsibility wasn't.
00:57 In fact, it did, albeit at a very slow rate. And that is a testament to the resilience
01:02 of the economy, but also the fact the government took some very difficult decisions early on
01:08 to make sure we got the economy back on track.