Sex and drugs help Britain's economy overtake France

Britain has overtaken France to become the world's fifth largest economy, new analysis shows.

A shake-up of the national accounts mid-year, which showed that the UK's downturn during the Great Recession was shorter and shallower than previously thought, helped Britain overtake the Gallic economy.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research said Britain's acceleration was also boosted by the inclusion of sex and drugs to UK growth analysis. The addition of prostitution and illegal drugs form part of new pan-European accounting standards, but France has refused to comply with the EU rules because it does not consider the two to be "voluntary commercial activities".

Eric Dubois, a director at France's statistics office, has described drug use as a dependency that does not involve free will. He said prostitution was the result of "Mafia networks".

Official estimates show prostitution added about £5.7-billion to the UK economy in 2013, and illegal drugs were worth about £6.62-billion.

This helped the UK to overtake France by the narrowest of margins, the centre's analysis showed. The UK's GDP is expected to total $2.828-trillion (R32.8-trillion) this year, compared with French GDP of $2.827-trillion.

The centre expects Britain to pull further ahead of France in the coming years. This is despite concerns about the sustainability of the UK recovery raised after further data revisions this week showed that growth in five out of the previous six quarters was weaker than thought.

Nominal UK GDP is expected to grow to $2.95-trillion in 2019, compared with $2.67-trillion in France.

The French economy has barely grown this year, and the eurozone is at risk of slipping into a deflationary spiral that economists have said may lead to a Japanese-style "lost decade". Britain is also on course to overtake Germany to become Europe's top economy by 2030, helped by its younger workforce and position outside the eurozone.

China is expected to overtake the US as the largest economy in 2025.