UK GDP figures released - live coverage

At 9.30am we will learn how well the UK economy performed in the second quarter of this year

8.30am: Britain would not officially be back in recession if GDP shrank during the last three months, but it would raise fears of a dreaded "double dip".

As this graph shows, the UK plunged into recession in 2008, and emerged in the last three months of 2009. It then suffered a sharp contraction in the final quarter of 2010, shrinking by 0.5% - which was blamed on the particularly bad weather last winter.

The country returned to growth between January and March, but the 0.5% expansion did no more than recover the output lost in the snow.

A recession, according to the definition used in Europe, is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

8.15am: The GDP figures will be announced at the Church House Conference Centre, over in Westminster.. Here's the schedule:

9.25am: informal welcome to the briefing
9.30am: ONS Chief Economist Joe Grice will announce the 2nd Quarter 2011 Preliminary Estimate for GDP
9.31am: ONS press officers will distribute hard copies of the GDP bulletin to attending journalists
9.33am: Joe Grice and a senior statistician will answer questions from the floor from attending journalists
10am: Joe Grice and a senior statistician will be available for one-to-one broadcast/ print interviews.

So, a fairly brief event - but one that will probably dominate the domestic news agenda today.

8.10am: Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of the announcement of the preliminary estimate of UK GDP for the second quarter of 2011.

Put another way, it's the moment when we find out how well the British economy performed in the last three months.

Most economists believe we will only see weak growth, wit! h the Ci ty consensus being an expansion of around 0.2%. Some are more confident - pencilling in growth of as much as 0.7%. But others are much gloomier - fearing that the UK economy could have contracted.

The Office for National Statistics will release the data at 9.30am. My colleagues Larry Elliott and Julia Kollewe will be reporting from the Office of National Statistics briefing, and I'll bring you all the reaction from the City and Westminster.


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