Will the Minister make a statement on the impact on the Welsh economy of UK inflation levels falling to 3.4 per cent, the lowest level in two and a half years?
The recent fall in the headline UK inflation rate will be welcome news for households across Wales, especially the fall in food price inflation, which has hit struggling families particularly hard. According to a recent House of Commons research briefing, over the past two years, average food prices in the UK have risen by a cumulative 23.9 per cent; in the preceding period, this rate of growth took a total of 12 years to be reached. This significant and rapid increase is of course not mitigated by the recent headline fall.
When looking at international comparators, there is obviously still some cause for concern which highlights the UK’s relatively poor performance in this area. The most recent period for which comparable data is available showed that inflation continued to be noticeably higher in the UK than the Eurozone (2.6 per cent). The OECD have also recently forecast that the UK would see the highest price growth in 2024 and 2025 in the G7.