A health minister says long-term, systemic domestic problems and a volatile global state has affected UK growth, as the latest Office for National Statistics figures show the economy contracted by 0.1% in January. Karin Smyth adds growth "is difficult, it's going to take some time, but we are determined to get there". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Growth is the major problem we know coming into office. We've had years of this growth.
00:05We've had some slight improvement before that. We know we're in really volatile times.
00:11I think what it says, as the Chancellor has said today, is that we do need to go further and faster
00:15with some of the things that we've put in place to make that growth better.
00:18The planning changes, these changes around NHS waiting lists,
00:22all of that is determined to make the growth better.
00:26It is difficult. We live in these really difficult volatile times.
00:30It's going to take some time, but we are determined to get there
00:33because growth is what's good for individuals, good for the economy, good for the taxpayer.
00:37We would like to be in a different place, of course.
00:39We'd like to have inherited something better, but the skills issue in this country,
00:44the planning issues, those are long-term systemic problems that are going to take a while to fix.
00:49We also live in more volatile times than we would like to be living in, and we have to respond to that.