Government's growth target

Tony Danker, director-general of the CBI, will use its annual conference to urge the government to be more ambitious with its growth targets and deal with an absence of policies needed to achieve Boris Johnson’s ambition for a “high-wage, high-skill, high-growth” economy.

In an interview with The Times, Danker, 49, said that the country was “going back to a 2008 storm” when, soon after pledges were made to transform the economy after the financial crisis, “we started arguing politically, we had an MP scandal crisis, and everybody just got on with business as usual, and the economy flatlined for a decade”.

Danker said that the prime minister was “betting the shop” on the private sector delivering his agenda around net-zero and levelling up but that he needed to “seize the moment” and “start to make bigger bets.

The government’s economic growth targets and policies on skills, investment and productivity are “nowhere near bold enough”, the head of Britain’s most prominent business lobby group will tell ministers next week. After 2008 until the pandemic, the nation’s economy has grown at an average of 1.3 per cent per year with “zero productivity growth”.

Danker said: “At what point did we give up on Britain being a 2 to 2.5 per cent growth economy?”

Forecasts published by the Office for Budget Responsibility alongside the chancellor’s budget showed economic growth forecasts of between 1.3 per cent and 1.6 per cent in 2024 and 2025. However, the former Treasury adviser said that the government should aim for the 2.5 per cent annual economic growth achieved in the 1990s and 2000s. So I think the government are hoping that the private sector delivers on all this stuff.

I think it’s more complicated than that.”

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