Responding to today's (Friday) GDP figures, TUC General Secretary
Paul Nowak said:
“The UK economy has stopped shrinking. But one quarter of decent
growth won't make up for 14 years of lost living standards.
“The Tories are still presiding over the worst period for
economic stagnation and livelihoods in modern history.
“Real wages are worth less than in 2008 and working people will
end this parliament worse off than at the start.
“Workers would be over £10,000 richer if pay had kept pace with
its pre-crisis trend.
“The Conservatives have succeeded only in making families
poorer.”
The TUC says the Conservatives have presided over the worst two
episodes of growth since the 1920s:
- The austerity measures introduced by the government in 2010
resulted in annual growth of just 1.2%, on average, between the
start of the global financial crisis and 2019.
- And since the pandemic UK annual growth has been just 0.7% on
average the worst since the 1920s.
ENDS
Notes to editors:
The figures are from TUC analysis of all economic cycles over the
past 100 years, first published in Nov 2023: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/tuc-conservatives-are-presiding-over-worst-period-economic-growth-1920s
Cycles are measured from the peak year of one cycle to the peak
year of the next. The cycle over the pandemic to the present is
incomplete and based here on updated figures from 2019 to 2024
(using the March OBR figures for 2024).
Responding to GDP figures showing the UK has officially
emerged from a recession, John O'Connell, chief executive of the
TaxPayers' Alliance, said:
“The return to growth is a rare piece of good news for taxpayers,
who have had little to smile about recently.
“But while commentators talk of a mild recession, for households
it's been anything but as they have struggled with persistent
inflation and a record high tax burden that is delivering little
in the way of quality public services.
“Ministers should use this welcome boost to deliver further tax
cuts for families and businesses to ensure these figures are felt
in people's pockets and not just recorded in official
statistics.”
Responding to the latest GDP figures , founder and CEO of
pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade, said:
“While we should welcome today's news that Britain has clawed its
way out of recession, we need to do much more to secure the
economic growth the country needs.
“If we do not make it easier to build the economy boosting
infrastructure - the homes, R&D labs, transport links and
clean energy sources - that Britain desperately needs, we will be
trapped in a doom loop of economic stagnation for decades to
come.
“Unless urgent action is taken to overhaul our outdated planning
system the prospect of the economy delivering the growth we all
want to see will slip further and further away.”
The UK economy has bounced back from recession, with
stronger-than-expected growth of 0.6 per cent in the first
quarter of 2024 – the strongest of all G7 economies. This
momentum will need to be maintained given Britain's wider
economic backdrop of frequent downturns and stagnation, with GDP
per capita growth down 90 per cent over the past 16 years, the
Resolution Foundation said today (Friday).
Strong economic growth in March (0.4 per cent) contributed to the
strongest quarterly growth (0.6 per cent) since Q4 2021 when the
economy was still recovering from the pandemic, and lifted the UK
out of recession. Encouragingly, both the services and production
sectors enjoyed strong growth, though the UK's improved trade
balance was driven by falling imports rather than strong export
growth.
However, the UK's wider economic backdrop remains a concern. The
UK has now experienced three recessions in the past 16 years.
This record of a downturn occurring roughly every five years is
far worse than their occurrence of roughly once every ten years
during the second half of the 20th century.
Second, amid the ups and downs of technical recessions is a
bigger picture of stagnation. GDP per capita grew in early 2024
for the first time in two years, but it is still down 1.3 per
cent over this period, and has grown by just 4.3 per cent over
the past 16 years in total. In contrast, during the 16 years
running to the financial crisis in 2008, it grew ten times as
much – by 46 per cent in total.
James Smith, Research Director at the Resolution
Foundation, said:
“The UK swiftly exited its latest recession in 2024 with the
strongest economic growth since late 2021.
“But the wider backdrop is still worrying. Britain is falling
into recession twice as frequently as it did in the second of the
20th century, and it remains a stagnation nation.
These all-too regular shocks and slumps in between are reducing
living standards and straining the public finances.
“The battle of ideas on how to change this record should be key
during the election campaign.”
