The Office for National Statistics is set to release GDP data for the United Kingdom tomorrow and it is expected that the figures will show a return to economic growth.

The fourth quarter of 2010 saw the economy contract by 0.5 per cent, although this was mainly attributed to the cold weather in December. Even without the impact of the weather it is believed that the British economy was more or less stagnant.

The contraction of the economy was seized upon by the Opposition Labour Party, who claimed that the Coalition government's plans to rein in spending had damaged growth.

In the third quarter of last year GDP growth was 0.7 per cent.

The figures for the first quarter of this year are expected to show a return to GDP growth.

According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research the revival of weather sensitive activity in the first quarter could help lead to GDP growth of 0.7 per cent. Such a figure would mean that GDP growth, when discounting the impact of weather, would be an average of just 0.1 per cent in the last two quarters.