British recovery to be ‘long and slow’

Britain could be out of recession in six or nine months but the road to recovery could be long and slow, Bank of England policy-maker David Miles said.

“We may get a couple of quarters pretty soon of small increases in GDP. If you take that technical definition we might be out of the recession in six or nine months,” he said.

“If you ask the question when will growth return to a level when, say, unemployment stops rising, I fear that’s a little bit further down the road, and I think that’s a more realistic definition of coming out of recession.”

On Wednesday, official data showed the number of Britons out of work rose to 2.47 million in the three months to July, the highest rate in almost 13 years.