UK economic growth slowed to 0.1% for the past three months in a blow to the Chancellor ahead of the autumn Budget.<\/p>\n
Official figures also show the economy declined by 0.1% in September after the cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover hit activity in the manufacturing sector.<\/p>\n
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said UK gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.1% between July and September, following a 0.3% increase between April and June.<\/p>\n
The readings were weaker than expected, with economists having predicted growth of 0.2% for the quarter, with expectations that September would show zero growth.<\/p>\n
Weakness in September was particularly linked to a tumble in motor manufacturing as JLR\u2019s factories halted production in the face of a damaging cyber attack.<\/p>\n
UK production output dropped 2% for the month, with car and trailer manufacturing plunging by 28.6% \u2013 its sharpest fall since the height of the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020.<\/p>\n
The ONS said the drop in car manufacturing, which was linked to the hack as well as a broader decline in commercial vehicle volumes, knocked 0.17 percentage points from GDP for the month.<\/p>\n
This also represented a 0.06 percentage point knock for the quarter.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, activity in the services sector slowed to 0.2% for the quarter, from 0.4% in the previous period.<\/p>\n
ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said: \u201cGrowth slowed further in the third quarter of the year with both services and construction weaker than in the previous period.<\/p>\n
\u201cAcross the quarter as a whole manufacturing drove the weakness in production.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a particularly marked fall in car production in September, reflecting the impact of a cyber incident, as well as a decline in the often-erratic pharmaceutical industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is the latest set of disappointing economic data for the Government after the ONS revealed earlier this week that UK unemployment has risen to 5%, its highest level for four years.<\/p>\n
Statistics point towards a weakening economic backdrop ahead of the Chancellor\u2019s autumn Budget on November 26.<\/p>\n
Growth in the latest quarter marked the weakest quarterly performance since the economy slipped into a mild recession at the end of 2023.<\/p>\n
Rachel Reeves had been hopeful that stronger economic growth can help increase tax revenues and support Government spending plans.<\/p>\n
In response to the latest data, Ms Reeves said: \u201cWe had the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in the first half of the year, but there\u2019s more to do to build an economy that works for working people.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt my Budget later this month, I will take the fair decisions to build a strong economy that helps us to continue to cut waiting lists, cut the national debt and cut the cost of living.\u201d<\/p>\n
The weaker-than-expected economic growth has contributed to growing expectations that the Bank of England will cut interest rates at their vote next month.<\/p>\n
Rob Wood, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: \u201cGrowth undershooting the MPC\u2019s forecast of 0.2% all but seals a December rate cut when added to the weak jobs data published on Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interest rates currently sit at 4% and are likely to be cut to 3.75%, according to the financial markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK economic growth slowed to 0.1% for the past three months in a blow to the Chancellor ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[362,748,31424,5286,393,4884,35862,1144,15165,24164,180347,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-567543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-autumn-budget","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-cyber-attack","12":"tag-economic-growth","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-manufacturing-sector","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-office-for-national-statistics","18":"tag-ons","19":"tag-predicted-growth","20":"tag-scotland","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom","23":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115542216225568383","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}