00:00 The Prime Minister has been very keen to take credit for falling inflation in previous months.
00:08 Will he now take responsibility for today's rise?
00:14 Mr Speaker, Mr Speaker, inflation was over 11% when I got this job. Inflation today is
00:22 4%, Mr Speaker.
00:24 A Reuters poll of economists found that the experts were expecting inflation to drop slightly
00:29 to 3.8% in last month's data. They woke up to a surprise though. UK inflation has risen
00:35 for the first time in nearly a year to 4%. The rate of price growth was 3.9% last month,
00:42 but despite the rise, still sits at less than the Bank of England's 4.6% prediction, according
00:47 to the Office for National Statistics.
00:50 Inflation never falls in a straight line. We can see from the rest of the world, it's
00:53 gone up in France, the United States and the Eurozone. So we have a plan. We've taken very
00:58 difficult decisions to bring inflation down. That plan is working. And what today shows
01:04 is that we need to stick to that plan and then we will succeed.
01:08 All countries have seen a mild tick up in December, all countries have. But the crucial
01:13 thing is that inflation has been more than halved, delivered ahead of schedule and that
01:18 is having an enormous benefit to families up and down the country.
01:20 Sunak and Hunt both sought to reassure the public that the slight rise was in line with
01:25 other nations across the world and overall is still much lower than the start of Sunak's
01:30 premiership. But what will the increase mean for everyday household budgets and bills?
01:36 Salaries aren't always rising as fast as inflation. So it's the cost of living crisis. It's still
01:41 very much a challenge for a lot of people across the UK as things get more expensive.
01:48 Financial things, not just like the internet, but food, travel, all gets more expensive.
01:55 If their earnings are not going up at a similar rate, then that creates a bigger problem for
02:01 them.
02:02 The Consumer Price Index, or CPI, measures change over time in the prices paid by consumers
02:07 for a representative basket of goods and services. Looking at the latest figures, we can get
02:12 a sense for just how the cost of living crisis continues to affect UK households as a whole
02:17 and the prices of which particular items are rising or falling most sharply.
02:23 The Office for National Statistics has now unveiled their newest economic analysis based
02:27 on the latest data from December 2023. But what exactly is that data telling us?
02:33 The biggest drivers of inflationary rises for December were tobacco and alcohol products,
02:38 unsurprisingly so, as the cost of both have been the largest contributors to inflation
02:42 since 2006. Tobacco prices increased by 16% on the year, while alcohol was up 9.6%. The
02:51 rise was boosted by Jeremy Hunt's higher duties for tobacco products announced in the
02:55 autumn budget. This was slightly offset by food inflation, where food costs still rose,
03:01 but at a much slower rate than this time last year.
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