The growth, which came as a relief for George Osborne, was powered by a relatively robust performance from the UK’s dominant services sector which expanded by 0.6 per cent on the previous quarter. The Chancellor said the figures were evidence that the economy was healing. “Despite a tough economic backdrop, we are making progress” he said.

The growth, which was higher than most estimates from City analysts, will ease the pressure on the Chancellor who has come under unprecedented pressure recently to ease his austerity programme. Last week the credit rating agency Fitch became the second credit agency to strip Britain of its AAA rating that Mr Osborne had pledged to defend on taking office. It cited the UK’s weak growth prospects and rising debt. The International Monetary Fund also recommended last week that the Chancellor slow his programme his cuts. Rob Carnell of the banking group ING said, now that economy had registered growth, Mr Osborne “can allow himself a moment of smugness”.

Over the quarter industrial production rose 0.2 per cent, benefiting from North Sea oil output coming back on line after disruption last year. The construction sector, however, contracted by 2.5 per cent, as building firms were hit by the freezing winter. Yet the ONS said that snowfall and cold weather in the first three months of the year had, overall, had a “limited impact” on GDP growth.

The positive figure follows a GDP contraction of 0.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2012. A further successive quarter of negative growth would have seen Britain in its third recession since the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Yet, despite the growth in the last quarter, the ONS figures showed that the level of UK GDP remains 2.6 per cent below its peak in the first quarter of 2008, while other economies such as Germany and the US have recovered all their lost ground.

The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told LBC 97.3 radio: "That's a better number than I think many people had been anticipating, but it's one number for one quarter.

"We haven't triple-dipped, so that's obviously a welcome thing, but I don't want anyone to think that somehow we are out of the woods yet.

"We have still got a lot of work to do. The healing of the British economy is taking longer than we had anticipated and we will continue to work hard to make sure the country and the economy grow from strength to strength."

And some analysts warned that the UK economy was by no means on the road to recovery. “The recovery still faces significant obstacles ahead, with households still experiencing falling real pay and policymakers still struggling to get bank lending to rise” said Vicky Redwood of Capital Economics.