By helping business Hunt is taking us in the right direction

AS I LISTENED to the Autumn Statement from Jeremy Hunt yesterday, a thought popped continually into my head: this is mini-Budget Kwasi Kwarteng should have delivered rather than his over-the-top, uncosted litany of tax cuts which destroyed his and Liz Truss's careers in the process.

- ROSS CLARK

Let's face it: Jeremy Hunt is not exactly political box office - it was like listening to a finance director deliver the interim results of a dull but worthy FTSE 350 company but it was a package which set out to do what Truss and Kwarteng promised: pep up dismal Britain's economic A the growth without increasing borrowing and debt.

The FTSE 100 gave its approval by showing as much life as the electrocardiogram of a dead mouse. It will take more than one Budget to tackle Britain's new disease: stagnant productivity. Alarming Office for National Statistics figures released this week show output per worker fell by 0.1 percent between the third quarter of 2022 and the same period in 2023. Output per hour fell by even more to 0.3 percent.

Productivity growth never really recovered from the 2008/09 financial crisis, and has stalled since the pandemic. While we have avoided the recession forecast by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, I can't see growth wildly outstripping the OBR's prediction of 0.7% for 2024.