Britain is in the grip of a deeper recession than had hitherto been thought, official figures show this morning. Data from the Office for National Statistics show that GDP fell 1.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the year before, down from the earlier estimate of 1.8 per cent. This was the worst performance since the second quarter of 1991. For the year, GDP rose by 0.7 per cent over 2007, down from 3.0 per cent in the previous year. Britons' pay barely grew at all in the final quarter of last year, eking out a gain of just 0.1 per cent, its weakest for more than 14 years, and driving a sharp drop in consumer spending that deepened the slump in the economy, official figures showed today. Virtually stagnant wages were a key factor behind a sharp 0.7 per cent drop in households' spending in the fourth quarter (Q4), which came on the heels of a 0.2 per cent fall in the previous three months. While the 1.5 per cent drop in GDP in the final three months of last year — the sharpest drop since 1980 — was confirmed, the contraction in the third quarter of the year was revised down to 0.7 per cent, from 0.6 per cent. Figures for manufacturing and production output for the fourth quarter of last year were revised down sharply to show a fall of 4.5 per cent, against 3.9 per cent, but a better-than-estimated performance from the more dominant services sector, which shrank by 0.9 per cent compared with initial estimates of a 1 per cent drop, helped offset this.