Philip Hammond will present the Budget next week amidst new global figures that show the UK is now bottom of the growth league among major economies in Europe and North America.
The data on GDP up to Q3 2017 puts Britain significantly behind its peers, dropping below Belgium, Italy and France.
The UK economy expanded by just 0.4 per cent in the third quarter of this year, new early estimates from the Office for National Statistics show, which brings the year-on-year growth rate to a bumpy 1.5 per cent.
Poland, who saw its economy expand at its fastest pace in more than five years in the third quarter, topped the list, with Canada also experiencing significant growth.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney recently said Britain would be booming if it wasn’t for Brexit.
He said the bank’s predictions for foreign investment in Britain was now 20 per cent lower than they estimated in the month before the referendum.
Business investment in the UK has picked up, but it hasn’t picked up to any of the extent that one would have expected given how strong the world is, how easy financial conditions are, how high profitability is and how little spare capacity they have.
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