The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of the 1st of December is attached.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

The Rt Hon. the Lord Naseby

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

05 June 2023

Dear Lord Naseby,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking when the list of items used to calculate the core inflation figure were last reviewed (HL8157).

The list of items used to calculate Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and Consumer Prices Index, including owner occupiers’ Housing costs (CPIH), and their core equivalents, is updated on an annual basis.

Prices were first collected for the most recent update in January this year. In 2023, 26 items were added to the CPIH basket, including e-bikes and frozen berries. 16 items were removed, including digital compact cameras and non-chart CD albums bought in store.

Further information can be found in our Consumer price inflation basket of goods and services: 2023 release [1].

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/ukconsumerpriceinflationbasketofgoodsandservices/2023

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon. Member's Parliamentary Questions of 5 December is attached.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon. Member's Parliamentary Questions of 5 December is attached.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have therefore asked the Authority to respond.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

Letter from John Pullinger CB, National Statistician, to Lord Maginnis of Drumglas , dated 3 May 2018.

Dear Lord Maginnis,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking, further to the Written Answer by Lord Young of Cookham on 30 April (HL6934), when the Office for National Statistics expects to be able to produce regional price indices, including for Northern Ireland (HL7465).

The Office for National Statisitcs (ONS) commissioned the University of Southampton to produce a feasibility study into producing price indices for all the Government Office Regions, including Northern Ireland, using current price and expenditure data. The results of this research were published in November 2017[1]. Following this publication, we have further commissioned University of Southampton to continue the study. While still underway, initial findings of the study suggest that we will be unable to produce reliable regional price indices without a significant increase in the price sample for this area, which would be costly. We expect the study to be completed by December 2018.

We are actively pursuing access to retailers' transactional databases as part of our work exploring alternative data sources for consumer price statistics under the Digital Economy Act’s framework to access data for statistical purposes. At such a time as we receive access to these data we will have a sufficiently detailed data source to explore more reliable regional consumer price statistics; however, our timescales are dependent on when retailers might provide us with such data.

Yours sincerely,

John Pullinger

[1] Feasibility study into producing CPIH consistent inflation rates for UK regions

​The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

Letter from John Pullinger CB, National Statistician, to Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, dated 20 April 2018

Dear Lord Maginnis,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what was the percentage cost-of-living increases nationally during each of the last five years; and what was the annual percentage increase in rates in Northern Ireland over the same period (HL6934).

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) is our most comprehensive measure of inflation, and measures the change in price of a fixed basket of goods and services. The 12-month percentage change in the index is published on a monthly basis. The table below summarises the average 12-month percentage change for each of the last five years.

Table 1: Annual average percentage 12-month change, CPIH, UK, 2013 to 2017

These data are taken from Table 10 of our Consumer Price Inflation bulletin[1]. In this publication you will also find the 12-month CPIH inflation rates, and similar figures for the Consumer Prices Index (CPI, the Monetary Policy Committee’s current inflation target). CPIH is the same as CPI but includes Council Tax and a measure of owner occupiers’ housing costs, which are not included in CPI. CPIH and CPI are both National Statistics.

Unfortunately, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) does not currently produce an inflation measure for Northern Ireland. This is because the price sample is optimised at the national level and therefore regional price samples are small. Nevertheless, I do recognise that there is an important user need for regional measures of inflation, and to address this ONS have asked the University of Southampton to carry out a feasibility study into calculating regional price indices[2].

You may also be interested to know that ONS analysis suggests that prices in Northern Ireland were on average 2.3% lower than the UK average for 2016. (Note that this analysis refers to the relative difference in price between regions, which is distinct from the rate at which prices change over time). This is taken from our Relative Regional Consumer Price Levels of Goods and Services, UK: 2016 publication[3], which is based on estimates produced for Eurostat once every 6 years.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/ukconsumerpriceinflationmar2018

[2] See our Consumer Prices Development Plan, section 3.3.5

[3]https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/relativeregionalconsumerpricelevelsuk/2016

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply and will place a copy of their letter in the House library.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Glen Watson, dated May 2013:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question concerning the known official uses of the retail prices index (RPI), consumer prices index (CPI) and any alternative measure of inflation. (155048)

The uses have been described in an article ‘How ONS consumer price statistics are used’:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/cpi/consumer-price-indices/july-2011/how-ons-consumer-price-statistics-are-used.pdf

The article adds more detail to the following summary.

Both CPI and RPI are used as macroeconomic indicators of inflation particularly by Her Majesty's Treasury to inform decisions on economic policy and to monitor the effectiveness of policy. A range of government departments also use both measures to monitor how prices for specific goods and services compare with general levels of inflation and to remove the effect of price changes when forming policy.

The RPI is used to uprate the redemption values of index-linked gilt-edged securities and national savings certificates.

The CPI is used:

as the basis of the government's inflation target.

to deflate ONS retail sales estimates and relevant components of the national accounts, such as household final consumption expenditure, to constant prices so that the effects of price change are removed from the series.

in the uprating of state pensions (alongside the average weekly earnings index), public service pensions and most state benefits.

Two new official measures of inflation - CPIH and RPIJ - were introduced in March. CPIH is a new measure of consumer price inflation that includes owner occupiers' housing costs. These are the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home. RPIJ is an improved variant of the Retail Prices Index which is calculated using formulae that meet international standards. ONS currently classifies these new series as experimental statistics and they are being assessed by the assessment team of the UK Statistics Authority to determine whether they should be awarded National Statistics status. Since they have only recently been introduced, there are unlikely to be many official uses as yet.

There is, additionally, a family of indices behind the headline measures that is used for a variety of official purposes. For example, CPIY is the CPI excluding price changes which are directly due to changes in indirect taxation. This is used, for example by HM Treasury, to assess inflation at times when the headline CPI is directly influenced by Government-driven changes to taxes and duty.

The CPI is also the UK's official measure of inflation provided for the purposes of the European Union. In that context it is referred to as the harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP). HICPs provide the official measure of consumer price inflation in the euro-zone for the purposes of monetary policy in the euro area and assessing inflation convergence as required under the Maastricht criteria.

These are the official uses known to ONS.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Stephen Penneck, dated 18 May 2012:

As Director General of the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking for the likely effect on CPI and RPI inflation of the measures in Budget 2012 relating to the imposition of VAT [107990].

The March 2012 budget announced that the Government would address anomalous VAT borderlines. These include the application of VAT to self-storage facilities and also, to the extent that it does not already do so, to the sale of hot food, cold food consumed on the suppliers' premises, sports drinks, holiday caravans and to the rental of hairdressers' chairs. These changes impact on the rotisserie chicken and self storage items that are included in the goods and services measured by the CPI and RPI. The estimated effects on the CPI and RPI are to add 0.03 and 0.02 percentage points to the 12-month rates in October 2012.

ONS published this information as part of a wider release on the estimated impact on CPI and RPI of measures announced in the March 2012 budget, previous budgets and pre-budget reports. This is available at

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/cpi/estimated-effect-of-the-budget-on-consumer-prices-index-and-retail-prices-index/spring-2012/estimated-effect-of-the-2012-budget-on-consumer-prices.pdf