The "green shoots" of economic recovery will start appearing "before very long", a Government minister has said.
On the day that unemployment broke through the two million barrier for the first time in 12 years, Solicitor General Vera Baird said that the Government's "fiscal stimulus" package to revive the economy was beginning to work.
She said that the situation in the UK was not "anything like as bad" as that in some of the other leading industrialised countries in the G7.
"One is reasonably confident that there will, before very long, be green shoots," she told BBC Radio 4's The World at One.
Business Minister Baroness Vadera sparked controversy in January when she suggested that she could see a few "green shoots" of recovery.
Her boss, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, was forced to step in to make clear that she was not predicting the end of the recession.
The phrase is most closely associated with the former Tory chancellor Norman (now Lord) Lamont who was widely ridiculed when he claimed to see "the green shoots of economic spring appearing once again" during the recession of the early 1990s.
Ms Baird said that "of course" the Government's £20 billion fiscal stimulus - including the 2.5% VAT cut - was having an effect on the economy.
"The most important thing, of course, is that we have spent enormous amounts of public money, quite rightly, trying to stop it (the recession) from getting any deeper," she said.
"Really, the truth is that we have led other countries into doing it. Of course it is starting to work."
While she acknowledged that some firms were still having difficulty getting credit, she said that the Government's efforts to get bank lending flowing again were also beginning to have an impact.
"Everybody has an individual story about a business on the high street that hasn't yet been able to secure its borrowing. There is absolutely no doubt about that. But things are filtering through," she said.
Ms Baird said that the recession had started later in Britain than elsewhere and would have to run its course. However other countries were in a worse situation.
"We started much later, we have to run its course. But of course we are not at the moment suffering anything like as bad as some of the other G7 countries are," she said.
Ms Baird's comments came as the International Monetary Fund forecast that the UK will be among the hardest hit countries this year and the only major economy to experience negative growth across 2010.
It said that the British economy will shrink by 3.8% in 2009, compared to a contraction of 0.6%. Japan was the only major economy that it said would fare worse, contracting by 5%.
Next year, the IMF expects the UK economy to shrink by another 0.2%, while the rest of the world returns to growth.
© 2012 The Press Association Limited
