Osborne under fire over triple-dip threat as Tories urged to adopt Thatcher legacy with tax cut and Darling attacks austerity plan GDP figures on Thursday could show Britain is in triple-dip recession Alistair Darling says George Osborne's austerity is 'simply not working' Liam Fox calls for Coalition to echo Thatcher by cutting spending and tax Osborne to expand Funding for Lending scheme to boost small businesses In trouble: George Osborne faces the prospect of a triple-dip recession later this week George Osborne is under pressure from all sides as he faces the possibility of a triple-dip recession this week. The Chancellor is expected to announce plans expand lending to small businesses - but his predecessor Alistair Darling says the Government's economic policies are 'simply not working'. And while many have called for the Coalition to ease austerity measures after Britain was downgraded by another credit ratings agency, leading backbencher Liam Fox insists that Mr Osborne should adopt Margaret Thatcher's 'intellectual legacy' by cutting taxes and spending. Britain's latest GDP figures are set to be announced on Thursday, and many experts predict that they will confirm the country has slipped into recession for the third time since the global financial crisis. The average forecast is just 0.1 per cent, meaning that if growth is any lower the UK will officially be in recession, after the economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2012. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the country's GDP will grow by just 0.7 per cent this year, and 1.5 per cent in 2014. Britain's continuing economic weakness this week led ratings agency Fitch to scrap the country's AAA credit rating, two months after Moody's did the same. Mark Carney, incoming governor of the Bank of England, has added to the pain by describing the UK as a 'crisis economy' comparable to the crisis-hit eurozone and sluggish Japan. Disaster: The UK has been unable to sustain the economic recovery from the financial crisis Mr Osborne's latest bid to boost growth is via the Funding for Lending scheme which offers Government loans to businesses which cannot otherwise get credit. He is expected to extend the duration of the scheme by a year, to January 2015, and to include finance houses and leasing firms which specialise in lending to small businesses. FLS was first launched last summer, but it did not stop net lending slumping by £2.8billion in February despite providing a helping hand to the mortgage sector. The Bank of England has been wary of more concrete steps to boost the economy, such as a new round of quantitative easing, over fears they could lead to a spike in inflation. Fitch's decision to downgrade Britain's credit rating to AA+ on Friday has led to a backlash from Mr Darling, who accused the Governent of 'lumber on' with failing policies. The Edinburgh South West MP, who served as Chancellor from 2007 to 2010 and has been tipped by some to return to the post if Labour wins the next election, said Mr Osborne had lost credibility. Critics: Liam Fox, left, and Alistair Darling, right, have attacked Mr Osborne from the Right and Left respectively 'What you saw last week were more and more people saying his policy isn't working,' he told Sky News. 'I've been saying that for the last three years, and it was pretty unfashionable to do so, but what you're now seeing are respected figures inside and outside the UK calling into question the strategy. The big question is, how long does the present Government simply lumber on simply hoping something will turn up? He continued: 'It is manifestly obvious it is simply not working.' Mr Osborne also faced opposition from his own side, with former Defence Secretary Dr Fox reported to be preparing an attack on him from the Right. He is to call for the Government to freeze state spending for five years in order to save £345billion, according to the Sunday Telegraph. Dr Fox will also say that pensioners' benefits such as winter fuel allowance should be means-tested, and the savings used to fund a tax cut to boost 'wealth creation'. The staunch Thatcherite will draw on the public mourning for the former Prime Minister to urge the Coalition to take a harder line on public finances. Controversy: Incoming Bank of England chief Mark Carney described the UK as a 'crisis economy' 'Those of us who were drawn to the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher's desire to free people from the pigeon holes that they had historically been put into, free to exploit their own talents in a country that valued opportunity, creativity and hard work, have a duty to make that message heard to the next generation as well,' he will say. Dr Fox is also expected to call for capital gains tax and inheritance tax to be reformed so that people are not taxed multiple times on the same pot of money. Mr Osborne did receive one piece of praise today from an unlikely source - his Labour opposite number Ed Balls, who thanked the Chancellor for sponsoring him to run the London Marathon to the tune of £50 for charity. David Riley, managing director of Fitch, warned that despite the rating downgrade Mr Osborne should be wary of abandoning his austerity programme. 'It's not just about the austerity, the bottom line is the private sector borrowed too much in the UK, it's been very hard to rebalance the UK economy,' he told Sky News. The UK produces and sells things to the wrong places, if you like. We are not selling goods to fast-growing economies in Asia such as China, we are selling financial services to Europe. He added: 'If there was a change of strategy such that the UK was to say we're not going to try to cut this deficit over the next three, four years and we are going to allow the national debt to continue to rise, potentially indefinitely, that would put a lot of pressure on the rating, it's likely that the rating would fall in that context.' Conservative MP Mark Field echoed that warning, saying: 'The big test isn't so much what the IMF say but what the markets say. The one lesson is that we have kept our interest rates very low.