CEBR: We take no pleasure from bleak forecasts

Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), comments on economic forecasts:

"We take no pleasure in outlining such a bleak forecast. But the world is going through a fundamental change where previously poor economies are industrialising fast. This is good news for them, but because of the limits imposed by shortages of energy, minerals and food, some of their growth is at our expense.

"This is not to say that if we break off trading with them we will be better off. On the contrary, a strategy of disengagement with the rest of the world would make matters very much worse.

"The chancellor will not reduce the deficit as quickly as he thinks since tax revenues will be
depressed by slow growth. But this does not make the case for giving up on austerity. Indeed our forecast, which shows that the UK debt to GDP ratio will go above 90%, means that he will at the minimum have to keep the austerity programme going for much longer than he originally thought."