Downing Street Says » GDP Figures

Asked how disappointed the Prime Minister was with this morning’s GDP figures, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) said that the Chancellor had spoken about the GDP figures this morning and the Prime Minister agreed with him; we would see growth returning at the turn of the year. The Chancellor also said that confidence was beginning to return. This had been a major global financial crisis and the most difficult recession in sixty years, but this reinforced the fact that we should continue the action the Government was taking.

Put that the Chancellor expected the GDP figures to show growth, the PMS said that the Chancellor could not have anticipated such a thing because he wouldn’t have known what the figures were. The Chancellor had said that we expected growth at the end of this year. We were hoping that the sense of confidence in the economy would also continue to grow.

Put that we were best placed to come out of the recession compared to other countries, the PMS said that different countries were at different stages of their economic cycle. The characteristic of this recession was the global financial nature of it, which had different impacts, at different stages, in different countries. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor were focused on the implications for this economy and we had done a number of things to help people, including; cutting VAT; giving 150,000 firms more time to pay their tax bills; giving help to 300,000 people for their mortgages; and the scrappage scheme. The policies and programmes we had introduced would ensure that, to the extent these things could be controlled, we would see recovery beginning to come through at the end of the year.

Asked if the Prime Minister still believed there was a deflation risk, the PMS said that that was always a concern for any government, but it was important that we did all we could to make sure growth returned at the turn of the year.

Asked if the Prime Minister was surprised that the GDP figures didn’t show growth, the PMS said that the Chancellor had said that we didn’t expect to see growth return until the turn of the year.

Put that confidence was important in terms of getting the economy going again and asked if the Prime Minister was concerned about this, the PMS said that the Chancellor had said that confidence was beginning to return, which was an important driver of growth.

Asked if the Chancellor would put back the Pre Budget Report (PBR) until January, the PMS said that the timing of the PBR was a matter for the Chancellor.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Friday, October 23, 2009

GDP Figures

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries