Cabinet minister Ken Clarke today warned the UK economy was likely to be just 'keeping its head above the water' until after the next general election.
Mr Clarke, whose portfolio includes advising Chancellor George Osborne, said Britain was 'slowly getting out of it' but it could be three years before growth figures were back to normal.
In an an interview with Sky News' Murnaghan programme he said: 'We are bouncing along the bottom, not achieving normal growth because we are in the middle of a good financial crisis gripping the Western world.
'We were left with a public deficit and debt which rivalled Greece, size for size.'
The Cabinet minister said the 0.3% GDP growth figure for the first quarter of this year was better than many other Western countries.
He argued that the UK government was cutting public spending slower than President Hollande's government in France.
'We are not going back into recession as most of the Western economies are. We are cutting spending more slowly than almost any of the other western European sovereign debt infected countries.'.
Mr Clarke said the coalition would press ahead with its plan while that pace was 'good enough to heal the economy'.
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'We are keeping out heads above the water, but we have got one or two, or three years even, still to go.
'We have got to be allowed to finish the job.'
Figures released on Thursday revealed the UK economy avoided a triple-dip recession and grew by 0.3 per cent between January and March this year.
The figure was significantly better than the 0.1 per cent growth expected by most economists and Chancellor George Osborne said it was an 'encouraging sign that the economy was healing.'
Mr Osborne said: ‘We all know there are no easy answers to problems built up over many years, and I can't promise the road ahead will always be smooth, but by continuing to confront our problems head on Britain is recovering and we are building an economy fit for the future.’
Cabinet minister Ken Clarke was interviewed about the state of the Uk economy on the Sky News' programme Murnaghan