The UK economy grew more slowly than was previously thought last year as household spending and business investment tailed off in the final few months leaving Britain trailing even further behind America and the eurozone. GDP growth for the three months to December was downgraded from 0.5 per cent to 0.4 per cent by the Office for National Statistics in its second estimate. The cut was enough to drag down 2017 growth as a whole from 1.8 per cent to 1.7 per cent, the slowest annual rate of expansion in five years. The economy has held up far better than expected immediately after the Brexit referendum, when the consensus of economists was for a slowdown to 0.8 per cent in 2017 but global growth outperformed…

Source: The Times February 22, 2018 12:00 UTC