Opposition leader Ed Miliband has said government cuts are to blame for the UK’s growth forecast for 2011 being revised downwards.
Opposition leader Ed Miliband has said government cuts are to blame for the UK’s growth forecast for 2011 being revised downwards.
The forecast for GDP growth from the Office of Budget Responsibility was downgraded from 2.1 to 1.7 per cent, Chancellor George Osborne announced in his Budget speech today.
Said Miliband, ‘It didn’t happen by chance, it happened by choice. His choice – and it’s the wrong choice – to [cut] too far and too fast.’
Growth for next year is expected to be 2.5 per cent, followed by expansion of 2.9 per cent in both 2013 and 2014 slowing to 2.8 per cent in 2015.
John Philpott, chief economic adviser to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), says the forecasts ‘still look very optimistic for 2012 onward and may well have to be revised further downward in due course’.
Philpott adds that unemployment is expected to rise by around 100,000 this year before peaking at 2.6 million, while price inflation ‘will easily outstrip average pay increases until 2013’.
