First steps towards recovery

New figures released yesterday show Britain has come out of recession.

Jim said:

"There was some good news yesterday as we got the figures for the UK economy for the last quarter of 2009, showing that the UK has officially come out of recession. Statistics show that the economy grew by 0.1pc after six consecutive quarters of contraction.

We won’t get a detailed breakdown of what this means for the Scottish economy for a while yet. The Scottish economy has more or less mirrored the UK performance throughout this recession so far, but we’ll have to wait for the detail before we can see exactly.

Anyway, this isn’t about numbers. While the economists may be telling us that Britain is technically out of recession, for some people in Scotland the recession has only just begun. By that I mean anyone who has just lost their job, or small businesses who are struggling to get loans from the banks.

So this is no time for politicians to be patting themselves on the back on a job well done. The next year will be full of challenges as we focus on protecting jobs, getting those people who have been made redundant back into work, and moving Scotland forward.

What is clear is that the difference is like night and day compared to where we were a year ago, and that is because we have intervened in so many areas – from investing in the banks to stop them falling over; to cutting VAT and bringing in the car scrappage scheme; and to getting young people back into work through the Youth Guarantee Scheme and the Future Jobs Fund. Now is not the time to stop stimulating the economy and we’ll keep doing it for as long as we need to."