The shadow chancellor says it is "deeply disappointing" that the economy shrunk by 0.3% in April, a figure higher than expected. Mel Stride adds, "this is a budget that's spiralling ever-upwards and this government is failing to get a grip on". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
00:00So really deeply disappointing. They're below what most economists were expecting and I think they're reflective of the fact that the government is mismanaging the economy. They came in, they put up taxes, particularly on businesses, borrowed a lot of money, which has been inflationary, kept interest rates higher for longer and we're now paying on our national debt about 100 billion a year in servicing costs, which is about twice what we spend on defence. And you add all those things up, I'm afraid that is the root of why you're seeing very lackluster growth.
00:26So if you take welfare, what this government's done is pussyfooted around the whole issue until they came to the spring and then the word went out from the Treasury they had to save some money so they hastily pulled a load of levers to try and save some. But they scrapped all of what we had done when we were in office, which the OBR had scored as a five billion pound saving and would have seen 450,000 fewer people going on to long term sickness benefits. So they've unwound that. This is a budget that is spiralling ever upwards and this government is failing to get a grip on.
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