Posts tagged "GDP"

Autumn statement 2012: key points

The crucial economic announcements made by chancellor George Osborne in his autumn statement to the Commons

Here are the crucial economic announcements made by chancellor George Osborne today in his autumn statement to the Commons.

Hit refresh to update the page as the statement continues.

Growth

• Office for Budget Responsibility adjusts growth forecast downwards to -0.1% this year (previous forecast for 2012 was 0.8%).

• OBR says trade, not austerity, to blame for lower growth, Osborne says.

• OBR forecasting 1.2% growth next year, 2% in 2014, 2.3% in 2015, 2.7% in 2016 and 2.8% in 2017.

• 2008-09 contraction was deeper than previously thought: GDP shrank then by 6.3%.

Deficit

• Deficit has fallen by a quarter in last two years and will “continue to fall”.

• Deficit forecast to fall from 7.9% last year to 6.9% this year, then 6.1%,
5.2%, 4.2%, and 2.6%, reaching 1.6% in 2017-18.

• £33bn saving on interest payments predicted two years ago.

• OBR says government is “on course” to meet target of getting rid of structural deficit over five years.

• Period of austerity extended by one year to 2017-18.

Debt

• OBR says the government will miss its target of getting debt falling as a percentage of GDP by 2015. It will be falling by 2016-17, he says.

• Net debt forecast to be 74.7% this year, then 76.8% next year, then 79%, 79.9%, falling to 79.2% in 2016-17 and 77.3% in 2017-18.

Borrowing

• Borrowing set to fall from from £108bn this year to £99bn next year, £88bn in 2014, then £73bn, then £49bn, then £31bn in 2017.

Jobs

• Since the election, 1.2m jobs created in the private sector.

• OBR predicting unemployment to peak at 8.3%.

Economy

• “It is a hard road, but we’re getting there,” says chancellor. “Turning back now would be a disaster.”

• Bonds trading at yield of 1.81% instead of 3.14% two years ago.

Government departments

• Departmental budgets cut by 1% this year, and 2% next year. NHS and schools exempted.

• Local government budgets cut by 2% in 2014.

Spending

• Share of national income spent by the state to fall from 48% of GDP in 2009-10 to 39.5% in 2017-18.

• International development spending remains at 0.7% of GDP (although GDP now lower).

• Capital investment in infrastructure totalling £5bn over two years
includes £1bn for roads, upgrading A1, A30, and M25. High Speed 2 rail link will be extended to north-west England and West Yorkshire, and London’s Northern Line will be extended to Battersea.

• Investment of £600m in science, £270m for further education
colleges, and £1bn for schools.

Tax

• The 40% higher rate tax threshold will go up by 1% in 2014 and 2015 from
£41,450 now to £41,865 and then £42,285.

• Personal tax allowance to rise by £235 more than planned in April 2012. It will now go up £1,335 in total next year. That will take the personal allowance to £9,440. Extra rise will not be adjusted so will benefit higher rate taxpayers too.

• From April 2014 main rate of corporation tax will drop 1% to 21%.

• Three pence per litre fuel duty rise planned for January cancelled.

• Bank levy rate increased to 0.13% next year.

• Additional HMRC spending of £77m to fight tax avoidance by wealthy individuals and multinationals – expected to increase money collected from tax evasion and avoidance by £2bn a year.

• No new tax on property.

• The capital gains tax annual exempt amount will increase by 1% in 2014 and 2015, reaching £11,100.

• The inheritance tax nil-band rate will rise from £325,000 now to £329,000 in 2015-16.

• New measures to save £1bn over four years from fraud, error and debt in tax credit system.

Pensions

• Basic state pension to rise by 2.5% next year to £110.15 a week.

• Treasury to raise £1bn by cutting tax relief on pensions. Lifetime allowance to drop from £1.5m to £1.25m. And the annual tax free limit will go from £50,000 to £40,000.

Savings

• Isa limit to go up to £11,520.

Benefits

• Most working age benefits – including jobseekers’ allowance, employment and support allowance and income support – to be uprated by 1% for the next three years.

• Child benefit to rise by 1% for two years from April 2014.

• Welfare changes save £3.7bn by 2015-16.

Autumn statement: growth and NHS figures jolt George Osborne

Gloomy deficit and growth forecasts as health secretary Jeremy Hunt rebuked over spending claims

George Osborne is facing politically damaging charges that he is reducing NHS spending in England, and failing to cut the deficit this year, the opposite of the Conservatives’ central pledge of the 2010 election campaign.

Ahead of Wednesday’s autumn statement, in what is likely to be a day of bad news on growth, borrowing, debt, taxes and broken fiscal rules – and with the chancellor acknowledging there are “no miracle cures” to the country’s economic strife – the government faced the additional embarrassment of its official statistics watchdog telling the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, he was wrong to claim that NHS spending was rising.

Ministers have repeatedly said the health budget was rising in real terms.

But the chair of the UK statistics authority Andrew Dilnot, following a complaint by the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, said he “concludes that expenditure on the NHS in real terms was lower in 2011-12 than it was in 2009-10″.

He has asked Hunt to “clarify” statements on the Conservative website claiming “we have increased the NHS budget in real terms in each of the last two years”. Hunt himself told MPs on 23 October that “real-terms spending on the NHS has increased across the country”.

The scale of the reduction in NHS spending is very small, but taken alongside the expected Office for Budget Responsibility report showing borrowing rising, it does mean Cameron is not meeting his promise at the start of 2010 to cut the deficit, and not the NHS.

The chancellor was expected to say on Wednesday: “In this autumn statement, we show that this coalition government is confronting the country’s problems, instead of ducking them. The public know that there are no miracle cures. Just the hard work of dealing with our deficit and ensuring Britain wins the global race.”

A Department of Health spokesman challenged Dilnot’s conclusion, saying: “The 2010-11 year should not be used as a baseline for NHS spending because the budget and spending plans were set in place by the previous government. For the first year of this government’s spending review, as Andrew Dilnot acknowledges, NHS spending increased in real terms compared to the previous year by 0.1%.”

The OBR will on Wednesday reduce its 2012 forecast made in March from 0.8% growth to about zero and for 2013 from 2% to about 1%. The target to reduce public debt as a share of national income by 2015-16 will also be missed. Osborne may also be forced to concede the structural deficit will not be eradicated for another five years, pushing the austerity to near the end of the decade.

In an attempt to give the economy a short-term boost ahead of the 2015 election, Osborne announced on Tuesday he was releasing £5bn for capital projects, mainly funded by cutting Whitehall departmental spending by 1% in 2013-14 and 2% the following year.

Health, schools and overseas aid will be exempted from the cuts, as will local government in the first of the two years. The Ministry of Defence will be allowed to roll over an underspend this year to next year.

The capital spending will include £1bn for schools to find 50,000 extra school places, including new free schools, academies and places in existing well run schools. London councils say the money is insufficient to meet the shortfall in places in London alone.

The rest of the capital spending will go on transport, skills, including further education and science. Extra help will be provided to infrastructure projects.

The Treasury says the extra capital spending will mean that capital spending on average will be higher in this parliament than in the previous three parliaments from 1997 to 2010.

A similar £5bn switch was announced in last year’s autumn statement. But research by the Guardian shows that more than half of the new capital investment announced in that autumn statement has not yet been spent on buying goods and services or paying wages, while projects have taken months to be ready and to process the money, awaiting planning permission or other hold-ups.

Most economists believe the continuing deterioration in the public finances will force Osborne to abandon his hopes of meeting his self-imposed rule to get public debt falling as a share of national income by 2015-16.

The Treasury believes the markets are already braced for the announcement, and there will be no damage to Britain’s credit rating.

Osborne will aim his statement at Britain’s “strivers” with a freeze in fuel duty aimed at household budgets while welfare benefits will be squeezed, but not frozen. The chancellor has already said the rich will be asked to pay more, including an expected cut in tax relief on pension contributions for high earners.

The extra £5bn over the next two years on capital spending will have “a minor, almost negligible” impact on overall economic growth, the Ernst and Young Item Club said.

The club, which said earlier this week that an extra £14bn on capital spending over the same period would raise economic growth by 0.5% of GDP a year, said it would be difficult to estimate the impact of £5bn over the same period.

Nida Ali, economic adviser to the Item Club, said: “Although it is a step in the right direction it is likely to have a minor, almost negligible, impact on the growth rate. It is not likely to be very visible.”

Ali added that the impact of extra capital spending is “likely to be even more negligible” because the changes will be fiscally neutral after the chancellor announced that the money would come from underspends in current budgets.

“We think the £5bn on capital spending is a step in the right direction. But we feel this is still not enough to have a big impact on growth because he has tightened elsewhere to be able to find this £5bn.” Gemma Tetlow, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the £5bn would stimulate economic growth, though this would be within the margin of error of GDP forecasts. Tetlow said the extra capital spending would stimulate growth by less than 0.2% of GDP a year using the OBR’s estimate that it provides a fiscal mutiplier of one. GDP stands at £1.5tn.

Osborne also faced the embarrassing news that his flagship plan for workers to be given company shares in return for abandoning their employment rights, to be confirmed on Wednesday, has already been rebuffed by business leaders. The business department confirmed that fewer than five organisations out of 209 respondents “had welcomed the scheme and said they would take it up”. Osborne had put the proposal at the heart of his speech to the Tory conference in October.

Wall Street manipulates deficit angst with fiscal cliff fear | Dean Baker

Deficit hawks rely on media allies to report budget doom to advance their agenda of cutting Medicare and social security

Many of the nation’s most important news outlets openly embrace the agenda of the rich and powerful that colors its coverage of major economic issues. This is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than during the current budget standoff between President Obama and Congress, which the media routinely describes as the “fiscal cliff”. This terminology seriously misrepresents the nature of the budget dispute, as everyone in the debate has acknowledged. There is no “cliff” currently facing the budget or the economy.

If no deal is reached this year, then on 1 January, daily tax withholdings will rise by an average of about $4 per person. Any money actually deducted from pay checks will be refunded if a deal is subsequently reached that returns tax rates to 2012 levels. Government spending probably won’t change at the start of the new year, since President Obama has considerable discretion over the flow of spending. No one can think that this modest increase in tax withholdings would plunge the economy into a recession, but the Wall Street types seeking to dismantle social security and Medicare have used their enormous wealth and allies in the media to generate this kind of fear-mongering across the country.

One way in which they have pushed their agenda has been in misrepresenting projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO’s projections show that if higher tax rates and lower spending are left in place for the whole year, then it will substantially slow growth and push the economy into a recession. However, these projections explicitly assume that we go a whole year without reaching a deal. They say nothing about what happens if the government cuts a deal by the second or third week in January. Even a Washington Post editor should be sharp enough to understand this distinction; nonetheless, many stories have implied that the recession projections apply to missing the 1 January deadline.

Wall Street types have also pushed this idea that the markets are demanding for programs like social security and Medicare be cut. This sort of assertion, which is treated as a fundamental truth by the Washington insider crowd, has the wonderful feature of escaping contradiction. Of course, none of us knows exactly what will trouble the financial markets or by how much that trouble would hurt the economy. (In fact, even a sustained drop in the stock market has a limited effect on the economy, and short term fluctuations have almost no impact.) This means that when Wall Street, or their designated mouthpieces, make authoritative-sounding claims that the markets will be upset if we don’t cut social security or Medicare as part of a budget deal, there is no direct way to refute them. After all, it is possible that they might be right.

If economic reporters did their job, though, they would be looking for evidence to support these assertions about financial markets. They could start by looking at the track records of those issuing the warnings. If they examined the track records of people at organizations like the Campaign to Fix the Debt, and other deficit hawks, they would reveal to their audiences that these “experts” have the distinction of being almost 100% wrong on just about all their economic predictions over the last five years.

This crew has been predicting that large budget deficits would cause interest rates to skyrocket ever since President Obama’s first round of stimulus, almost four years ago. Many also predicted that inflation would explode. Yet, none of them warned us about the housing bubble: they were too busy running around the country yelling about the budget deficits even when the deficits were small enough that the debt to GDP ratio was actually declining.

In short, major national news outlets have adopted the agenda of the Wall Street elite that displays zero evidence of any understanding of what drives the economy, wholesale. Their assertions that the markets will panic without a budget deal that cuts social security and Medicare have no apparent foundation in reality. It is just a threat that they have concocted to advance their agenda. Now, that would make for a very good news story.

Osborne’s autumn statement means a bad year for him is about to get worse

The economy is still flatlining, GDP is below where it was in 2008 and the chancellor has had to water down his austerity plans

Booed at the Olympics. Author of the worst received budget in memory. In charge when the economy plunged into its first double-dip recession since the 1970s. It has been a year to forget for George Osborne. And it is about to get worse.

The biggest week of the chancellor’s two and a half year stint at the Treasury began on Sunday with a dogged “no turning back” performance on The Andrew Marr Show. It will culminate on Wednesday when he delivers his autumn statement.

Although it will be dressed up as prettily as possible with the promise of a £10bn crackdown on tax avoidance, the underlying message will be that Osborne has failed to deliver the new economy – less dependent on the City and living within its means – promised on his debut as chancellor in the Treasury’s inner courtyard one sunny morning in May 2010.

Instead, as the nights grow longer in December 2012, he will have to admit that deficit reduction is off-track, that he cannot meet his self-set rules for managing the nation’s finances and that austerity will continue well into the next parliament.

“It is clearly taking longer to deal with Britain’s debts, it’s clearly taking longer to recover from the financial crisis than one would have hoped but we have made real progress,” Osborne said.

But the clock is ticking. Wednesday marks the halfway point between May 2010 and the next general election in the spring of 2015, and the expected pick-up in the economy has not happened.

Michael Saunders, UK economist at Citibank, said even after the 1% growth in the third quarter of 2012, Britain had experienced the “worst recession-recovery cycle for many decades”.

GDP is 3.1% below where it was when the recession began 18 quarters ago in early 2008. “By contrast, real GDP was 4-5% above the pre-recession peak at this stage in the 70s and 80s cycles, and 7-8% above the peak in the 1990s”, Saunders said.

In his first budget, in June 2010, Osborne said forecasts produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility showed that the economy would be expanding by 2.8% in 2012, with the budget deficit down to £60bn in the 2013-14 financial year. In the 2011 budget, the OBR said growth would be lower at 2.5% and the deficit higher at £70bn. In the March 2012 budget, it estimated growth of 0.8% and a deficit of £98bn.

On Wednesday Osborne will admit that even these forecasts have proved too optimistic.

Hopes have been dashed of a repeat of the 1980s. Then, Geoffrey Howe raised taxes and squeezed spending but saw growth accelerate in time for the Tories to win the 1983 election. Osborne has increased VAT, frozen public sector pay, made welfare less generous and announced real cuts for all Whitehall departments except health and international development. And seen the economy flatline for the past two years.

The chancellor’s critics point to key differences from the 1980s: energy prices fell sharply, there was scope to cut interest rates and the rest of the world economy began a long upswing.

The TUC’s general secretary designate, Frances O’Grady, said: “Two and a half years in and the chancellor’s masterplan to blast a significant hole in the deficit during this parliament looks decidedly like a project on the verge of failure. Despite embarking on the sharpest spending cuts in modern history, government borrowing continues to rise.”

Free-market thinktanks offer a different perspective. For them, Osborne’s problem is that he has pussy-footed around with the deficit, and deeper spending cuts would generate growth by allowing taxes to be cut.

But with the economy at risk of a triple dip recession, the chancellor believes it would be unwise to intensify the austerity programme. Instead, he is expected to push back the date at which Britain’s national debt as a share of GDP will start declining. Politically that’s a real problem, because a slower, less aggressive approach was what the previous chancellor, Alistair Darling, proposed back in 2010.

Darling accused the chancellor of a “bankruptcy of ideas” and Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, is waiting to pounce on Osborne’s admission that weak growth means borrowing this year is going up, not down.

The chancellor’s defence will be that Britain has chronic economic problems, that Labour left him a dreadful inheritance and that he has been the victim of events beyond his control: the crisis in the eurozone and rising commodity prices in particular. He will insist that despite its track record the government is on the right course.

Doug McWilliams, the chief executive of the Centre for Economic and Business Research, said any chancellor would be forced to tackle the deficit and Osborne had been ill-served by the OBR’s duff forecasts.

Nick Parsons, head of strategy at National Australia Bank, said one success had been in protecting Britain’s AAA credit rating, now under threat. “The credit rating is much less important going forward but when it was important it was very important,” Parsons said, adding that in May 2010, Britain and Spain both had to pay just over 4% to borrow money for 10 years on the money markets. “One government had a deficit reduction plan, the other did not, which was why bond yields went to 7.5% in Spain and to 1.5% in the UK.”

Yet, Parsons added, the government has failed to exploit the benefits of low interest rates, to the irritation of its Liberal Democrat coalition partners, who would have liked Osborne to borrow cheaply to fund infrastructure projects.

Although not in the euro, Britain’s recovery has been slower than that of Germany or France. Only Italy of the G7 industrial nations has a weaker growth record and in the business community, which backed Osborne’s deficit reduction plan, patience is wearing thin.

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the advertising company WPP, acknowledged that the deficit reduction strategy had kept financial markets sweet and ensured interest rates remained low.

“That’s all fine. The trouble I have had is the overall plan. You can ask people to make sacrifices and talk about grim times but it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don’t have a plan.” Sorrell said it was a political mistake to cut the top rate of tax for the rich when living standards for the less well-off were being squeezed. He said action was needed on technology, hard and soft infrastructure, tax, immigration, and housing. “These are all the things that make a comprehensive plan. The coalition does bits but it doesn’t look like a joined up plan.”

Terry Scouler, chief executive of the EEF, which represents manufacturers, agreed. In the 2011 budget Osborne hailed the “march of the makers”, but Scouler said: “If this were a classroom and we were marking the government, even allowing for issues beyond their control such as the eurozone, our message would be ‘could do better’.” Scouler rejected the argument that Osborne’s problems were not of his own making. “The government didn’t respond quickly enough to the re-emergence of the eurozone crisis in 2011.”

One manufacturing firm bucking the trend is David Nieper, a clothing firm based in Alfreton, Derbyshire. The company, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011, has thrived while most of Britain’s textiles industry has disappeared by direct selling of quality products at home and abroad.

Managing director Christopher Nieper said the firm had continued to grow throughout the recession, and was producing 25% more than it was this time last year. “We had our highest sales last year in our 50-year history.”

Nieper says the firm has succeeded by developing a niche market: upmarket clothes made to order for customers with plenty of disposable income, mostly in the 40-plus age range. The company exports 36% of its production, turnover has gone up from £600,000 to £14m in the past 10 years, and 30 new members of staff were hired in the past year.

Yet Nieper said manufacturers needed more help from the government, adding that the cuts in capital allowances to finance lower corporation tax rates were a mistake. He urged cuts in national insurance contributions – “a tax on jobs” – to encourage hiring and do more to develop skills.

Green groups worry that the pressure to get the economy moving is leading to Osborne playing fast and loose with the environment. Dave Powell, economics campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said that in opposition, Osborne had been critical of Labour’s record on climate change, but it had been a different story since May 2010.

The chancellor, Powell said, had opposed long-term targets for de-carbonisation, promoted a dash for gas, provided tax breaks for North Sea exploration while hacking away at subsidies for renewable energy, cut spending on home insulation, hamstrung the new Green Investment Bank and backed the construction of new roads and airports.

“We have a sense of despair. There is such a pressing need to decarbonise the economy but we are still fighting the old short-termist battles. You still get the impression that for Osborne looking after the environment is a luxury.”

The chancellor and his team know that the next 12 months are crucial. Osborne believes that if he can get the economy moving in 2013 there is still time to win an election on the basis that Labour’s mess is being cleared up.

Current portents are not good. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted last week that the UK would grow by just 0.9% and Sorrell said the mood of business was downbeat. “Planning our business in 2013 we are taking a very cautious approach. It’s going to be quite tough.”

Lord Oakeshott, a former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said a big problem was the unwillingness of the banks to lend. RBS and Lloyds – the two banks in which the taxpayer has a large stake – between them account for 60% of the small business market. “There has been a monumental failure to face up to that.”

The other problem, Oakeshott added, was the Treasury itself. “It is like a beached whale watching as the economic tide goes in and out”, he said. “There is much talk of Plan B. The Treasury only has a Plan I: I for Inertia.”

UK GDP since 1955

Gross domestic product is the economic output of Britain. See how it has changed over time
• Get the data

Britain’s households increased their spending at the fastest in more than two years during the three-month period that included the Olympic Games, helping the economy to expand by 1%.

Britain has emerged from double-dip recession. The second estimate for the third quarter has confirmed growth at 1%, up from the -0.4% in the second quarter of 2012.

The GDP growth is the strongest rate since the third quarter of 2007 according to the latest release by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Larry Elliott writes today:

The boost provided by the London Olympic Games helped household spending to rise by 0.6% in the July to September period, its fastest growth since the second quarter of 2010. A 3.7% increase in investment spending and a better trade performance also boosted gross domestic product.

The ONS explains the data as follows:

• Output of the production industries rose by 0.9%, revised down from the previously estimated increase of 1.1%
• Manufacturing output rose by 0.9% in the third quarter of 2012, revised down from the previously estimated increase of 1.0%
• Output of the service industries rose by 1.3%, unrevised
• Output of the construction industry fell by 2.6%, revised down from the previously estimated 2.5% fall.
• Household final consumption expenditure increased by 0.6% in volume terms in the latest quarter

A technical recession is defined as two or more consecutive quarters of economic decline. That means the UK has emerged from double dip recession.

The data we have gathered shows percentage change in GDP going back to 1948, we have a spreadsheet to download that shows GDP in cash, ie what it was that year not adjusted for inflation, total inflation-adjusted figures and per capita inflation adjusted figures.

The figures show how recessions compare – thanks to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research for the data.

As several of our posters below have pointed out, there’s more to life than GDP – but here are the latest GDP figures from the ONS for you to explore.

Data summary

DATA: UK GDP since 1948

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Scotland’s post-independence prosperity linked to oil

IFS says Scotland would be richer than rest of UK if it kept oil proceeds, but warns of crisis if revenue starts to run out

An independent Scotland would be richer per head than the rest of the UK if it kept the proceeds from North Sea oil and gas, but would face a crisis when that revenue started to run out, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies .

The IFS said public spending per head was £1,200 higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, but oil and gas revenues would be more than enough to pay for this, provided that they were allocated to Scotland on a geographical basis, rather than shared out equally within the UK. As a result, taking into account North Sea oil, “GDP per head is somewhat higher in Scotland than in the UK as a whole”, the IFS said. “If UK debt were shared on a per capita basis, an independent Scotland might inherit a slightly smaller debt-to-GDP ratio than that faced by the UK.”

However, the IFS said oil and gas revenues were “very volatile” and this could pose problems for an independent Scotland.

In the mid-1980s, if oil and gas revenues had been allocated on a geographical basis, they would have accounted for nearly half of Scottish revenue. By 1991-92 they would have accounted for just 3% of Scottish revenue; in 2008-09, they were back up to 20%.

There would be a further problem when the oil and gas started to run out, the IFS said.

“Like the UK as a whole, and most other developed nations, an independent Scotland would face some tough long-term choices in the face of spending pressures created by demographic change,” it said.

“If, as is likely, oil and gas revenues fall over the long run, then the fiscal challenge facing Scotland will be greater than that facing the UK.”

For Britain, the EU is good value for money | Rados?aw Sikorski

The UK’s demands for cuts to the EU budget are wrong-headed, and a veto would backfire

Over the last 20 years the United Kingdom has become much more European, but also Europe has become much more British. Britain has influenced the shape of the EU probably more than any other country.

The single market was a British idea. English is the most-used language in EU institutions. The European diplomatic service is run by Baroness Catherine Ashton. Most importantly, the British have brought to the EU a pragmatic approach and policy-making realism.

Yet British public opinion and politics is more Eurosceptic than ever. When Britain held a referendum in 1975 on EEC membership, 67% voted “yes”. Today almost half the population would rather leave the EU. Why is this?

The House of Commons has decided that the UK should take a more radical approach to the EU budget negotiations, demanding drastic cuts. This EU budget is roughly 1% of the GDP of all members of the EU. UK public spending is about 50% of GDP. The UK’s annual national contribution is about £9bn. Put another way: in 2011 the contribution from every UK citizen did not exceed £150. At the same time Italy and Germany paid up to 50% more, and wealthier states, such as Sweden and Denmark, pay twice as much for every one of their citizens.

Some of the money also returns to London. Moreover, every UK household “earns” between £1,500 and £3,500 each year thanks to the single market, according to UK government estimates. Irregularities in EU spending – around 3.5% is being questioned – are no bigger than those in national budgets. This is money well spent. The commission proposed a real terms freeze of the multi-annual budget at the 2013 level. So what is it that the UK really wants?

From the very beginning, Britain has called for cuts of around €200bn compared to the commission’s proposal – cuts that would hinder the growth agenda in Europe. Then comes the British rebate – another British priority. When Margaret Thatcher negotiated the rebate in the 1980s she did so to ensure fairness. If there had been no rebate, the UK would have paid more to the common budget than the other countries. Today the situation has changed, but the UK payments remain intact. The British rebate should also be discussed.

The UK’s position means that the country is no longer a force for the modernisation of the EU budget. Simply put, there remains just one justification for the British rebate – the common agricultural policy (CAP). This makes the UK a defender of the CAP because, if it disappeared, so would the British rebate.

So the UK focuses its efforts on the cohesion funds that go to the least developed regions. In many countries the EU cohesion policy contributed to more than half of all public investment. In Poland, 52% of all public investment comes from the EU budget. Most beneficiaries of the budget are in central Europe. This is our very own late “Marshall plan”, thanks to which we may at last catch up and right the wrong that we suffered at the 1945 Yalta conference.

A British veto of the budget in November would not decrease EU spending. The treaty foresees a situation in which the budget is not adopted, and this leads to provisional annual budgets. In such a case the level of spending in 2013 would be the basis for the next few years. Under annual budgets, payments for agriculture would increase – hardly a boost to innovation or better spending. And several national rebates would be up for negotiation.

Europe needs the UK, as the UK needs Europe. Much in the union needs amending. But this can only be done through co-operation. We need more British common sense in the EU, but Britain also needs friends. An important test of our friendship is coming up.

Clegg announces flexible hours plans

Deputy prime minister to unveil scheme to stop British women being ‘locked out of the workplace’ and boost GDP

Nick Clegg will set out plans on Tuesday to extend the right to flexible working to all employees, claiming that more women workers in the labour force will be critical to a revival of the economy.

His speech is heavily based on new research from the Resolution Foundation thinktank showing that compared with the situation in the best-performing countries, about a million women are missing from the UK economy.

The Resolution Foundation found that women are locked out of the labour market – particularly when they choose to start a family – largely due to high childcare costs. The UK ranks 15th in the OECD for female activity in the economy. It is claimed that if it had the same proportion of female entrepreneurs as the US, it would enjoy a £42bn boost to GDP.

Clegg will point out that the average woman is now better qualified than most men, performs better at school and is proportionately more likely to go to university. He will say he wants to “sweep away the clapped-out rules that make no sense for modern families in a modern economy”. He will add: “Today’s households aren’t all comprised of one bread winner and one homemaker; mum in the kitchen; dad in the office.

“The reality is that in many families, both parents work, often juggling busy lives, often working part-time, often without relatives or friends close by who can help out. Yet too often their lives are governed by rules and practices that belong to another time.”

The change will not be introduced until 2014 at the earliest. Clegg will claim the change will make it possible for other relatives, grandparents and even close family friends to change the way they work in order to help with childcare.

Under the current system, parents or carers have the right to ask to change their hours and location of work.

Employers are required to consider the request following a prescribed procedure set out in legislation.

This right is available for employees who have 26 weeks’ continuous service with their employer, and are either parents of children under 17 (under 18 if the child is disabled) or carers of adults either within the home or a relative.

The government will extend the right to request flexible working to all employees with 26 weeks’ continuous service with their employer.

Will Britain’s post-recession economy be resurgent, stagnant or greener?

Before 2007, the UK was humming on the back of a borrowing binge. But though growth is returning, will the old system?

Economic forecasting is a mug’s game. Experts find it next to impossible to predict the next set of quarterly growth figures or the length of the dole queues in the latest month.

Most forecasts are made by extrapolating recent trends and tweaking them a bit, which is why they tend to be wrong when economies are subjected to powerful shocks. Last week, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development bravely tried to envisage what the world will look like in 2062. But, as the UK’s recent experience shows, even imagining how things will pan out in 2013 is hard enough.

This time five years ago, the economy was still growing and Gordon Brown contemplated holding a snap general election, before eventually getting cold feet. The Royal Bank of Scotland had just bought ABN Amro in the biggest bank takeover in history. The official cost of borrowing set by the Bank of England was 5.75%. Only economic geeks had heard of quantitative easing.

It would have taken a brave forecaster to say back then that in late 2012 RBS would be largely owned by the British taxpayer, that interest rates would have been at 0.5% for the best part of four years and that the Bank would be sitting on £375bn of gilts bought from the private sector in an attempt to get the economy moving after a deep recession.

It was assumed at the time that all these measures were temporary expedients to deal with what was expected to be a short-lived crisis. Yet there is no immediate likelihood of RBS returning to the private sector, the City thinks that interest rates will remain at 0.5% until at least 2014 and the Bank will not start selling the gilts it bought under the quantitative easing programme until the economy can cope with dearer borrowing.

These forecasts could also prove to be wide of the mark. Although it currently looks unlikely, there is a possibility that all the stimulants pumped into the economy since late 2008 will finally work and that activity will accelerate rapidly. David Cameron may be right when he says that the good news will keep on coming.

In truth, nobody knows what is going to happen over short periods of time, let alone decades. Let’s take the UK as an example. The economy’s performance since the slump of 2008-09 has broken with recent historical precedent, with recovery much slower than was the case after the downturns of the early 1980s and early 1990s. The first quarter of 2013 will be the fifth anniversary of the pre-recession peak in UK output and the economy will still be around 3% smaller than it was in the first quarter of 2008. In 1986, five years after the trough of the recession of the early 1980s recession, the UK was humming. The pattern repeated itself in the 1990s.

It’s tempting to say that the problems of the economy are the fault of the government, either the current one for being too austere or the previous one for being too spendthrift. Tempting but wrong. Something more profound has been going on.

As Dhaval Joshi of BCA Research noted last week, the UK has been the fastest-growing major economy in Europe over the past decade, even after its double-dip recession. The reason for that, though, was simple: Britain went on a borrowing binge.

At the start of the 1990s, the UK’s combined private and public sector debt amounted to 165% of GDP. By 2000, this had climbed to 200% of GDP. Over the next decade it rocketed to 295% of GDP. It was this acceleration in the rate of growth of indebtedness, Joshi says, that provided the strong tailwind for the economy in the years before the financial crisis.

The problem, he adds, is that last decade’s tailwind has become this decade’s headwind. To receive the same boost from credit again, the UK’s debt-to-GDP ratio would need to accelerate again over the next decade, to 450% of GDP. That looks utterly implausible since the private sector is debt-sated and the government is aiming to cut its borrowing.

Seen in this light, the recent performance of the economy looks a lot more comprehensible. Deprived of the impulse it got from credit, the UK’s growth rate has fallen. There is nothing abnormal about quarter after quarter of virtual stagnation; the abnormal period was the pseudo-Ponzi scheme that went before.

Yet the Joshi analysis should be cause for sober reflection rather than deep depression. Let’s try out a few assumptions. The first is that a return to the pre-2007 business as usual model is both desirable and possible; this is fast becoming a minority view, although it does have its adherents.

The second assumption is that a stagnant economy is indeed the new normal but that we should welcome it as it will prevent us from burning up the planet. Greens would argue that Britain could thrive and be happy in a steady-state world provided work, income, wealth, and opportunity were shared more equitably.

The third assumption is that a new growth model will emerge from the wreckage of the old. Historically, this is the most likely scenario and it has often been periods of crisis in the past that have provided the catalyst for change. For example, the 1920s were a troubled decade for Britain with low growth, high unemployment and industrial unrest. Yet in the two decades after the end of the first world war there was a gradual shift in the economy away from the staple industries of cotton, coal and shipbuilding towards light engineering. Then, as now, the world was being changed by technology. Then, as now, the global balance of power was changing.

The crisis has been so powerful and so long-lasting it is easy to believe that the economy is like frozen Narnia under the White Witch. But humans are ingenious and adaptive: a thaw will eventually set in.

On past form, this structural transformation will take time and patience will be needed, particularly given Britain’s misshapen economy. It will be driven primarily by the private sector, although government has the capacity to help or hinder the process. Decisions taken on skills, education, welfare, infrastructure, public procurement, industrial strategy and banking will be crucial in this process and will matter far more than whether George Osborne tweaks fiscal policy in his pre-budget report next month.

The PBR is unlikely to be a bundle of laughs. The chancellor is going to have to admit that growth is weaker and borrowing higher than he had hoped. But it would be unwise and needlessly gloomy to assume Britain in 2022 or 2032 will still be today’s recession-mired basket case.

Economy has slowed sharply, NIESR says

Unexpectedly weak performance of industry makes a ‘triple-dip’ recession look increasingly likely, analysts say

The pace of growth in Britain’s recession-scarred economy slowed sharply in the autumn, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted on Tuesday, after official figures revealed a 1.7% drop in industrial output in September.

The thinktank’s latest forecast, published on Tuesday, showed GDP expanding by 0.5% in the three months to October – just half the speed of the 1% expansion in the three months to September that brought the double-dip recession to a close. NIESR expects it to be 2014 before output returns to the levels seen before the credit crrunch.

City analysts said the unexpectedly weak performance of industry, which makes up about 15% of the economy, made a “triple-dip” – with the Olympics bounce giving way to a renewed recession – look increasingly likely.

The Office for National Statistics said maintenance on North Sea oil platforms led to a 15.3% collapse in mining and quarrying output in September, contributing to the 1.7% fall in overall production. Manufacturing, which the government sees as key to reviving the economy, eked out a gain of just 0.1% on the month.

“UK factory output barely rose in September and energy production slumped, adding to evidence that the country risks sliding back into another downturn after the temporary growth surge enjoyed in the summer,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at data provider Markit.

Bookmaker Paddy Power is offering odds of just 1-3 on GDP slipping back into the red in one of the next three quarters. A spokesman said: “With the Olympics bounce now over and activity in the service sector tumbling, it’s looking odds on the UK economy is, to use contemporary parliamentary parlance, toast.”

However, manufacturers’ group the EEF was keen to point out that a number of industries, including pharmaceuticals, transport and electrical equipment all saw production rise over the month.

“A modest uptick in output in September points to some growth still out there for manufacturers, despite some of the weaker survey data recently,” said the EEF’s chief economist, Lee Hopley.

She urged George Osborne to build on this cautious optimism by offering “a clear vision from government at the autumn statement about the priorities for our economy and a plan to ensure growth stays on track”. When official figures released last month showed the recession drawing to a close in the third quarter of 2012, the chancellor was careful to give the news a guarded welcome, stressing that growth could weaken again in coming months.

Howard Archer, of IHS Global Insight, said the worse-than-expected performance from industry might help tempt policymakers on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee to extend its quantitative easing (QE) programme at their monthly meeting on Thursday.

“Signs that the economy is still struggling markedly despite the third-quarter GDP rebound keeps the door wide open to the Bank of England enacting more QE,” he said.

So far, the Bank has pumped £375bn of electronically created money into the economy to try and offset the impact of the credit drought from crisis-hit banks, and the lack of demand from markets in the eurozone.