Chelsea and Fulham M.P., Greg Hands has welcomed the fact that the UK’s economic performance is improving and that official figures are expected to show the UK's economic growth in 2013 was the strongest since 2007, the year before the financial crisis.
The Office for National Statistics has released its first estimate for Q4 2013 GDP growth showing a 0.7 per cent increase in the total size of the British economy. This means GDP was 2.8 per cent higher in Q4 2013 compared with Q4 2012. GDP is estimated to have increased by 1.9 per cent in 2013. The data is also expected to confirm that 2013 was the first year since 2007 that saw constant economic expansion. The full official figures will be released at the end of February.
Greg Hands said: These numbers are a boost for the economic security of hardworking people. This is great news for families my constituency and for those in work or trying to get in to work, as it will lead to further job creation. It is more evidence that our long term economic plan is working.
Meanwhile however Labour revealed this week they plan to spend and borrow an extra £25 billion. The Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, has refused to rule out spending and borrowing more for capital spending (while promising to match this Government’s day-to-day spending plans). The Institute For Fiscal Studies have confirmed that this would mean Ed Balls’ rules ‘would allow significantly higher spending on both investment and day-to-day items than would George Osborne’s plan’. Analysis of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s figures shows that this would allow Labour to spend and borrow an extra £25 billion after the election. This is a spending commitment the country simply can’t afford.
When the Coalition came into Government the country was borrowing nearly £160 billion a year and unemployment had increased by nearly half a million. Britain had suffered the deepest recession in our peacetime history and had been left with the biggest budget deficit in the developed world.
Greg added: “Since this Government came to power the deficit is cut by a third, businesses have created 1.6 million new jobs, and unemployment is down 167,000 on the quarter. But the job is not done, and it is clear that the biggest risk now to the recovery would be abandoning the plan that’s delivering jobs and a brighter economic future. I am amazed that Ed Balls wants to put the recovery at risk by thinking you can borrow less by borrowing more. It’s little wonder unemployment up by nearly half a million under Labour.”