Chancellor ‘under no illusions' of GDP challenge
Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she is “under no illusions” about the scale of the challenge after the UK economy flatlined in July for the second month in a row, according to the latest official figures. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'm under no illusions about the scale that this new government faces in fixing the economy.
00:07After 14 years of economic stagnation, we're not going to be able to turn everything around
00:13in one month or indeed in one budget.
00:16But today, in welcoming the new investment from Amazon Web Services in the UK,
00:22in data centres, in good jobs paying decent wages and helping people train with those technical skills,
00:29is about the prize that is in offer if we can bring stability back to the economy
00:33and work in partnership with business to rebuild our country and make it better off.
00:38And that is what I'm in this business for.
00:40We faced a situation when I became Chancellor that there was a £22bn black hole in the public finances this year.
00:48That meant we had to make difficult decisions, tough decisions, to get a grip of those public finances
00:54so that we could bring stability back to the economy.
00:57These weren't decisions that I wanted to make, they weren't decisions that I expected to make,
01:01but in the circumstances that we faced, it was absolutely right to make sure
01:06that our public finances were on a firmer footing because only through doing that
01:11do we have the chance to bring stability back to our economy
01:14and start to grow the economy after 14 years of stagnation.