Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham and Chislehurst)Department Debates - View all Clive Efford's debates with the HM Treasury
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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John Glen
Absolutely we will. It is very concerning that we are not seeing the savings passed on and we will continue to look very carefully at what is happening.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Minister has tried to explain away today’s disastrous figures by suggesting that it is mainly to do with the winding down of mass covid testing. That stretches credulity. Today the Office for National Statistics said:
“All main sectors contributed negatively to growth in April 2022”.
Does that not show that the problem is much more widespread than the Government are prepared to accept?
John Glen
No, I think there is a pretty clear consensus that the rapid wind-down of the testing had a significant effect—around 0.5% of GDP. If that had not happened, we would have seen very modest growth during this past month.