Business news live: UK economy grew 0.3% in second quarter as slowdown confirmed

Just to be clear – these figures being released today are not “new” as such – they are the revised figures from ONS after greater checks and slight changes to the data within each set.

Quite often they will revise the overall percentages up or down by an amount to give a more true reading based on data which can be tricky to handle in the tight turnaround for initial readings, which are usually given around mid-month.

It includes no changes so far for 2025, but there are slight alterations for last year, which we’ll detail in a moment.

Explaining the alterations, ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said:

“Today’s figures include improvements to our measurement of the economy, including better information on research and development and the activities of complex multinational companies, alongside the usual inclusion of updated and improved data sources.

“Growth for 2024 as a whole is unrevised, though these new figures show the economy grew a little less strongly at the start of last year than our initial estimates suggested but performed better in later quarters.

“Quarterly growth rates for 2025 are unrevised.

“In the latest quarter we saw an increase in the household saving ratio, very little growth in consumer spending and a slight fall in output for consumer facing services, despite growth in services overall.”

The ONS have released their major accounting figures for the UK across Q2 – the second three months of the year, April to June.

Chief among the headline figures is confirmation that the economy grew 0.3 per cent during that period, a marked slowdown on the 0.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2025.

Perhaps also notably, the second quarter of last year was also higher, at 0.6 per cent.

Morning all, lots going on once more, from the usual companies focus and stock market updates to more economic data pouring in to tell us how the UK is faring in the lead up to the Budget.