Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has championed new figures predicting that growth will be three times higher than originally expected.
The ONS has just released new forecasts predicting that growth in Quarter 1 of 2023 will now be 0.3 percent, up from its original prediction of 0.1 percent.
While the expert body still predicts a small fall in GDP in the third quarter of 2022, they say today’s new figures “indicate a stronger performance for professional and scientific businesses due to improved data sources”.
Annual growth in 2022 has also been revised up from 4.1 percent to 4.3 percent.
The new data also re-confirm September’s good news, when it was revealed the UK economy had actually well surpassed its pre-Covid size, after months of figures wrongly suggesting the UK was one of the few countries yet to fully recover.
Today’s figures show that GDP is 1.8 percent higher than before the pandemic (up to Q2 of 2023), compared to -0.2 percent previously believed.
Responding to the findings, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the data once again “proves the doubters wrong”.
“We know that the British economy recovered faster from the pandemic than anyone previously thought and data out today once again proves the doubters wrong. We were among the fastest countries in the G7 to recover from the pandemic and since 2020 we have grown faster than France and Germany.
“The best way to continue this growth is to stick to our plan to halve inflation this year, with the IMF forecasting that we will grow more than Germany, France, and Italy in the longer term.”
The news is another boost for the Tories on the eve of their party conference, along with an uptick in the party’s poll ratings following Rishi Sunak’s Net Zero speech last week.
The upward revision confirms Britain is no longer at the bottom of the G7 league table for post-Covid growth.
The UK’s 1.8 percent recovery is higher than France’s 1.7 percent and Germany’s 0.2 percent – and only slightly behind Italy’s 2.1 percent.
It’s not all good economic news for the Government this morning, however.
A new report by the IFS finds that the UK is on track for record high tax levels.
The body forecasts that taxes will account for 37 percent of national income by the next general election, the highest level since 1948.
