It's nice to see growth but real recovery will take change

Ben Southwood, Head of Macro Policy at the Adam Smith Institute, said:

"It is heartening and refreshing to see real output tick along nicely, putting it 0.7% up on the quarter, 1.9% up over 2013, and 2.8% higher than the same quarter last year."

"Despite all the talk about Forward Guidance failing, this looks like a win for Mark Carney's modest flagship policy. Without a futures market in nominal income it's nearly impossible to say for sure, but it seems like the policy gave markets extra confidence policy would not be prematurely tightened. We can say that the Bank of England was wrong about how quickly unemployment would fall, but that's a good problem to have."

"Still, it's not time to be complacent. Planning policy is so tight that even small liberalisations could add percentage points to GDP. The same goes for immigration, where an unnecessarily tight policy is clamping down on a major export—education—and keeping out potential entrepreneurs. The return to growth should not let us forget that CPI targeting allowed the 2008-9 crash and we need to seriously consider alternatives like nominal income targeting."

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The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It strives to engineer policies and educate the public in order to create a richer, freer world.