Chancellor hails inflation rate fall to 3.4%
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announces UK inflation fell to the lowest level in more than two years, to 3.4%. He would not be drawn on whether the fall would allow him to announce pre-election tax cuts in an autumn statement. Mr Hunt said: “What I’m really saying is that as inflation gets closer to its target, that opens the door for the Bank of England to consider bringing down interest rates, that brings down mortgage rates, that makes a very big difference. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00 Families today will heave a sigh of relief that we are firmly on track to bring inflation
00:05 down to its target 2%. This is the lowest headline rate for two and a half years, but
00:12 most encouragingly food inflation, which was nearly 20% a year ago, is now just 5%. And
00:20 what this shows is that the plan to bring inflation down, it was over 11% when Rishi
00:24 Sunak became Prime Minister, now just 3.4%. That plan is working, but we do need to stick
00:31 to it and see it right the way through. As inflation gets closer to its target, that
00:37 opens the door for the Bank of England to consider bringing down interest rates, that
00:41 brings down mortgage rates, that makes a very big difference. It's far too early to know
00:47 whether we'll have another fiscal event before the election, but what I would say is that
00:52 what you can see is the difficult decisions the government has taken over the last year
00:58 are paying off and we can see that, difficult though they were, they were the right thing
01:02 to do because inflation is now coming right down.