Cameron ready to claim worst of the recession is over for British economy David Cameron at prime minister's question time. Labour said Cameron's assertion that positive signs on the economy 'will keep coming' was a clear reference to the long-awaited numbers. The government's careful plans for a measured response to the expected news on Thursday that the British economy has finally crawled out of a double-dip recession were blown off course on Wednesday when official statisticians launched an inquiry into whether David Cameron had prematurely leaked the news in an attempt to score a political point at prime minister's questions. The row, a precursors to a much bigger political argument over whether the economy is starting to perform better than many expected six months ago, came after Cameron told the Labour leader, Ed Miliband: "The good news is going to keep coming." The prime minister is on a highly restricted list of senior politicians given access to market-sensitive information 24 hours before publication of Thursday's third-quarter growth figures. No 10 refused to say if he had looked at the information and said his remark was just a general reference to a range of recent good figures on the economy, including falling inflation and lower than expected public borrowing. Labour said Cameron's assertion in the Commons that positive signs on the economy "will keep coming" was a clear reference to the keenly awaited numbers. They are widely expected to show that the UK economy may have grown by as much as 0.7% to 1.0% in the third quarter, bolstered by Olympic ticket sales and a bounce back after the diamond jubilee dip. A spokesman for the UK Statistics Authority said it was going to look into the prime minister's words. The head of the authority, Andrew Dilnot, has been trying to prevent politicians being given access to the information, describing the practice as absurd. Nick Clegg tried to set the more restrained tone planned by the coalition in a speech to the City on Wednesday, saying: "Bluntly, with the economy still fragile, this is not the time for dogma. There's a lot of speculation about what tomorrow's GDP figures will bring. Whatever they look like, we know that, overall, we've set the economy on the right path. But recovery is slow and fitful. Repairing the damage following the shock in 2008 is a gradual healing process. Outlining Labour's expected response, the shadow Treasury secretary, Rachel Reeves, said: "The prime minister seems to have let slip what we already knew - that the Olympics will help Britain finally emerge from the longest double-dip recession since the second world war. The question is what the underlying growth rate of the economy is when we strip out the one-off Olympics and bank holiday effects. What really matters for jobs, living standards and the deficit is whether there is a strong and sustained recovery, and whether and how we can catch up all the ground we have lost over the last two years. Growth of 1% would simply mean the economy is the same size as a year ago. A one-off boost from the Olympics is no substitute for a long-term strategy and should not breed yet more complacency from David Cameron and George Osborne. The Office for National Statistics has made clear that billions of pounds of Olympics TV rights and ticket sales from the last 18 months will all be accounted for in the third quarter of 2012, regardless of when the money was spent. The recovery of output lost because of the jubilee bank holiday is estimated to be worth about 0.5% in the third quarter. The ONS raises the prospect that the fourth quarter will struggle to overcome the comparison, so seeing the economy slip back into contraction, if not recession. Labour points out that since the spending review in autumn 2010, Britain's economy has shrunk by 0.4%, compared with the 4.6% growth forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Britain is one of just two G20 countries to go into a double-dip recession this year. Labour acknowledges that growth is likely to have recovered by the election, but expects living standards will still be squeezed. But ministers have been looking at better than expected employment figures, as well as the fall in inflation, as tentative signs that the economy is more robust than some had estimated. They have also been relieved by lower than expected borrowing figures suggesting it is just possible that George Osborne will be able to say he can meet his fiscal target of debt falling as a proportion of GDP in 2015. The final pieces of the jigsaw suggesting recovery could occur more quickly than expected are growing signs that the worst of the euro crisis is over. That kind of thinking prompted Cameron to claim: "It's only a bad week if you think it's bad that unemployment's coming down. It's only a bad week if you regret inflation coming down. His tone jarred with a speech on Tuesday by Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, who warned that the "zigzag pattern of quarterly growth rates of GDP" was likely to continue. He added economic output was still barely higher than two years ago, and that he expected it might take five years for the economy to recover.