Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has championed fresh data projecting three times the increase previously predicted.
The ONS has just announced revised forecasts, anticipating that growth in the first quarter of 2023 will be 0.3 percent, up from 0.1 percent previously.
While the expert organisation continues to forecast a minor decline in GDP in the third quarter of 2022, they claim today’s numbers “indicate a stronger performance for professional and scientific businesses due to improved data sources.”
Annual growth in 2022 has been increased from 4.1 percent to 4.3 percent.
The new figures also support September’s excellent news, which demonstrated that the UK economy had surpassed its pre-Covid size.
Today’s figures show that GDP is 1.8 percent higher than before the pandemic (up to Q2 of 2023), compared to -0.2 percent previously believed.
Responding to the findings, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the data once again “proves the doubters wrong”.
“We know that the British economy recovered faster from the pandemic than anyone previously thought and data out today once again proves the doubters wrong. We were among the fastest countries in the G7 to recover from the pandemic and since 2020 we have grown faster than France and Germany.
“The best way to continue this growth is to stick to our plan to halve inflation this year, with the IMF forecasting that we will grow more than Germany, France, and Italy in the longer term.”
The news is another boost for the Tories on the eve of their party conference, along with an uptick in the party’s poll ratings following Rishi Sunak’s Net Zero speech last week.