Osborne's cuts policy 'demolished'

Office of National Statistics has published the quarterly report on economic activity in the UK for the last quarter of 2012 revealing worse than expected figures, with growth down 0.3 per cent.

Unite said news the economy is sliding further into decline, “coupled with the admission by the deputy prime minister that his government has committed serious errors in its management of the economy, has exposed them as failing the nation”.

Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey called again for the government to change course:

"This is now an urgent question of acting in the national interest,” he said.

“This government has been exposed as failures and fraudsters, and firmly responsible for the continued ruination of our economy.

"While Cameron and Osborne dined out in Davos and cosied up to international capital, mums and dads here are worrying that they will not have enough food to feed the kids this week and millions of householders are terrified to put on the heating.

“These people urgently need to hear that the government will stop the hardship it has imposed upon them.

"The penny may well have dropped with Nick Clegg that the government of which he is a senior member was wrong to attack spending, but his words offer nothing to the 20,000 people thrown onto the dole queue in the past three weeks alone, they won't revive our pock-marked high streets and they offer nothing for the millions more for whom life under this shambles of a government is bleak.

“George Osborne cannot now be serious about plans to rip ever bigger chunks out of national spending well into this decade. He cannot keep hacking the limbs off the body of our economy in the hope that it will walk again because, as he has been told repeatedly, it will not."

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said that today's GDP figures showed how difficult the UK's economic situation is.

“These figures today are a reminder of the severity of the challenges we face," he said.

"They are disappointing figures, they're not surprising, it’s what the OBR forecast at the start of last month after a strong growth in the third quarter of last year.”