• last month
The shadow chancellor has said the rise in inflation to 2.8% is "worrying." UK inflation has risen to its highest level since April driven by an increase in household energy bills, according to official figures.

Mel Stride said a key componenent to the increase has been energy bills. "The winter fuel payment has been removed for a lot of pensioners including the most vulnerable so I think a lot of people will be worried about this," Mr Stride said.
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Transcript
00:00I think it's worrying, 2.3% compared to just 1.7% last month, and of course people are
00:07going to worry about this because this is about prices rising, it's about pressures
00:11on living standards. A key component to this increase obviously has been energy bills,
00:18and this is at a time that we're going into winter, and of course the winter fuel payment
00:22has been removed from around 10 million pensioners, including some of the most vulnerable. So
00:27I think a lot of people will be very concerned about this. Very shortly after this government
00:31came in, for example, they gave substantially above inflationary wage increases, who thinks
00:36of train drivers on £60,000 moving up to £70,000, think about junior doctors with
00:42no productivity strings attached, and those are drivers of inflation. Now, more broadly
00:47in looking ahead, what the Office for Budget Responsibility, that's the independent forecaster,
00:52is saying that because of the measures taken in the budget, inflation will be higher in
00:57every single year of this parliament than it would have been under us back in the spring.

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