GDP figures confirm what we already knew - Jeremy Hunt

Thank you for talking to us. You’ve just seen obviously the GDP numbers today, your reaction to them. Well, these numbers confirm I think what we already knew, which is despite the Bank of England predicting the longest recession in 100 years, in fact GDP grew orbit marginally last year. That’s obviously very welcome. But one of the ways that we’re going to help that growth is by supporting families get back into work with a big childcare offer and what will be a hammer blow to those families is that just this week. Labour has said that they may refuse to guarantee that free childcare. Every child over nine months. That will be a huge disappointment to many families. Well, the Prime Minister’s pledge last year was to have inflation, and he delivered on that. In fact, inflation has fallen from over 11% to 3.4%. Having done that, he then said we would grow the economy. I don’t think any of us were expecting the economy to actually grow. Last year the Bank of England wasn’t, the Office of Budget Responsibility wasn’t. In fact it did, albeit at a very slow rate. And that is a testament to. The resilience of the economy, but also the fact the government took some very difficult decisions early on to make sure we got the economy back on track.