Britain could lose five years of economic growth

It’s no great secret that the events of the past few years have delivered a serious economic blow to the UK. But just how many years has the country been set back? This morning the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has published its updated ‘Economic Outlook’ which digs into some of these figures, erring on the pessimistic side of the forecast spectrum.

According to the NIESR’s new report, the UK economy is still a year off reaching its pre-pandemic levels. In the last quarterly update, the country’s GDP still sat 0.5 per cent below its level in the last quarter of 2019 – a figure that the Bank of England thinks will finally make a full recovery by the end of 2023. But the NIESR forecast ‘does not have it passing this level until the third quarter of 2024’ – a year later than is expected by the Bank. Meanwhile, today’s update shows the rate of inflation settling slightly above the Bank’s forecast for the end of the year – at 5.2