Jeremy Hunt has warned he will be making “eye-watering” decisions after the economy shrank in what is feared to be the beginning of the longest recession on record.
The chancellor admitted there would be a “tough road ahead” after new figures revealed that the UK economy contracted by 0.2 per cent between July and September.
The chancellor said the government would be forced to take “extremely difficult decisions to restore confidence and economic stability”, but insisted that the “fundamental resilience of the British economy is cause for optimism in the long run.”
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had fallen by 0.6 per cent in September, in part due to the Queen’s funeral. It could herald the beginning of a recession – which is defined as two quarters of shrinking GDP in a row.
Elsewhere, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves referred to the latest GDP figures as “extremely worrying” and “another page of failure in the Tories’ record.”
