laying the groundwork for an economic recovery can be slow work here at this green housing development in exitor but also across the country but today sunnier news Britain is no longer in recession the two quarters of contraction at the end of 2023 have been short and shallow and this year's first three months show positive growth of 0.6% but despite this verto hom says operating a business in the UK has become a struggle we've been building houses for 15 years now and it just seems to get harder and harder with regards to uh the planning system
um more red tape more Hoops to jump through it's still just as hard to get projects through planning as it was 15 years ago in Oxfordshire the Prime Minister and the chancellor want to convince you an economic corner has been turned this is where seamons builds the magnets to their new generation of MRI machines the chancellor wants to see more of this kind of investment in Britain's future well of course it's encouraging to know that uh in the last quarter the UK economy grew faster not just than France or Germany but also the United States
and I you know fully accept that people have been going through a very difficult time but what I would say is looking forward we do have some really good prospects can you be honest with people at home in that broad picture the economy has grown less than 1% in the last year if you look at GDP per head which kind of measures how good people feel yes it's up today great news but actually it's lower than where we were well GDP behead has gone up since 2010 in fact it's gone up by more than France
Finland Norway Netherlands Canada lots of countries gone since last year and down since 2019 it's gone down in lots of countries because we had a once in a sense pandemic and an energy shock over the past two years GDP per person a bellweather for how rich people really feel has been falling today at last it was on the rise again but sadly not enough to compensate for the recent decline now the shadow Chancellor says you're gaslighting the British public do you reject that claim well absolutely I mean if she thinks that it's some kind of
spin to say that the UK is attracting more investment from foreigners wanting to build factories and offices uh abroad than anywhere else in the world apart from the United States and China I would say the opposite actually the person who's doing the gaslighting here is the labor party who's saying that everything is going wrong with the British economy but the shadow Chancellor was having none of it this is no cause for celebration no cause for a Victory lap my ambitions Britain are so much greater than merely just coming out of recession which is all that
Rishi sunk and Jeremy Hunt have achieved but verto says all politicians need to get serious on planning reform if they want stronger economic growth to last we're here at the calace we know what's going on and we know what needs to happen to change it we're not heard change is not coming we'd like to see it but unfortunately it's just broken promise is after broken promises look around here amazing to see MRI machines being built but when you compare us to other oecd countries we have one of the lowest rates for MRI machines and scanners
holding back NHS efficiency why are we not investing used to Champion capital investment what's going on you're absolutely right um you know the reason our productivity is lower in the UK is not because British people don't work as hard it's because we haven't been traditionally investing in as much Machinery as other countries that is now changing as evidenced by the fact this week we're announcing 2 billion pounds of investment um which is going to help turn that around2 billion is a drop in the ocean compared to a 2.7 trillion pound economy jery hunt will need
many more sunny days to convince voters his turnaround is working King Helia ibraimi on the economy
