Rishi Sunak is under fire for failing to meet yet another of his five key pledges, after official figures showed the UK economy actually shrank between July and September this year. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revised its original estimate that GDP grew by 0.2 percent in Quarter 2 of the year, saying the economy actually showed no growth during the period.
In Quarter 3, they originally calculated that GDP stayed stagnant on +0 percent, however they’ve also revised that down to show the UK economy shrank by 0.2 percent during the three month period.
The ONS’s revisions are bad news for Rishi Sunak, who made ‘growing the economy’ one of his five key pledges when coming to power in 2022.
Responding to the news, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt suggested he was still optimistic.
“The medium-term outlook for the UK economy is far more optimistic than these numbers suggest.
“We’ve seen inflation fall again this week, and the OBR expects the measures in the Autumn Statement, including the largest business tax cut in modern British history and tax cuts for 29 million working people, will deliver the largest boost to potential growth on record.”
However his opposite number, Rachel Reeves, slammed the Government’s progress, accusing Rishi Sunak of having a “legacy of failure”.
“He failed to beat Liz Truss, he failed to cut waiting lists, he failed to stop the boats and now he has failed to grow the economy.”
The revised figures mean that a failure to see economic growth in the final quarter of this year would tip Britain into a technical recession.
Earlier this year the Government was delighted when the ONS revised its figures to show growth had been three times higher than originally believed.
The revision earlier this year also meant Britain grew faster than Germany and France.
At the time Mr Hunt said the revised data “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.”
Despite significant progress over his key pledge of reducing inflation, Rishi Sunak has struggled to get to grips with the other four he made when taking over from Liz Truss.
Both growth and debt are stagnant, while NHS waiting lists have failed to come down.
The Government is, however, claiming progress on Mr Sunak’s fifth pledge of stopping small boat crossings, with the number of boats coming over the Channel down by one-third.
