Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the reasons for the reportedly low levels of productivity in the UK over the last eight years.

The Government set out its assessment of the likely causes of the UK’s low levels of productivity in the 2015 Productivity Plan. This decomposes the problem into two components, a long standing productivity gap and a more recent productivity puzzle. Full details of this analysis can be found in the annexe to the Productivity Plan, here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/443898/Productivity_Plan_web.pdf