00:00Any increase in growth is of course welcome, particularly from a government that has singularly
00:05failed to deliver it. If you look at those numbers, actually the March number compared
00:10to the February number, the level of growth was under half, so there may be some tailing
00:14off but let's see, this is early days. Of course the national insurance increases, the
00:19increase in business rates that have just kicked in, the employment legislation that's
00:23coming down the line that the Treasury says will load on about 5 billion in extra costs
00:27for businesses are not impacted in those numbers in a significant way. And if you look at the
00:32overall forecast from the IMF, from the Bank of England, from the Office for Budget Responsibility,
00:37they're all downgrading growth across the year with the OBR actually halving its forecast for
00:42growth this year. So I don't think we should be popping the champagne corks on this but
00:47of course any growth as well. National insurance is going up very significantly, that is now
00:51being paid by businesses. I'm visiting companies all the time who are telling me about the stress
00:57and the strain they're under because of that, because of increases in business rates. You're
01:01seeing unemployment beginning to tick up as a consequence of that and the softening in
01:05the labour market. There are a number of different signals going on here. Growth of course is always
01:10welcome but we are far from out of the woods in terms of the overall macroeconomic picture.
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