Finance minister George Osborne said figures released today showed Britain had "deep-rooted economic problems," adding that the slump in the second quarter was disappointing even when taking into account one-off factors that hurt.

Britain's gross domestic product fell 0.7 percent compared with the first three months, the sharpest fall since the height of the global financial crisis in early 2009, the Office for National Statistics said, showing a bigger drop than any of the economists surveyed in a Reuters poll last week had expected.

Output in Britain's service sector - which makes up more than three quarters of GDP - contracted by 0.1 percent in the second quarter after growing 0.2 percent in Q1 2012.

Industrial output was 1.3 percent lower, while construction - which accounts for less than 8 percent of GDP - shrank by 5.2 percent, its biggest drop since the first quarter of 2009.

The figures confirmed that Britain remains mired in its second recession since the start of the financial crisis, with the economy shrinking for a third consecutive quarter.