FEW OF BRITAIN’S economic problems are more fundamental than the slide in the growth of productivity — output per person — in the last half century.
In the 1960s productivity typically rose by more than three per cent a year, enabling output per head and hence living standards to double in little more than 20 years. But in the decade to 2019 productivity increased by only 0.9 per cent a year even before the ravages of Covid-19. If this were the best Britain
