THE worst of the UK’s inflationary pressures may be over, according to the former Joint Head of the Government Economic Service.

Speaking to GB News, Vicky Pryce, currently the Chief Economic Adviser at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said:

“What we’ve seen internationally is that energy prices have been coming down.

“At the pump, people have just realised that in fact, petrol and diesel is going up a little bit because of the OPEC restriction on producing oil; Russia and Saudi Arabia in particular.

“But what we’ve seen nevertheless, is that over a period of time and compared with last year, energy prices and petrol prices are considerably lower than they were at the time, so that’s bringing inflation down.

“If that continues, even if we have the monthly increase in inflation, then that does suggest that perhaps the worst is over and it’s good for people because, interestingly enough, wages are now rising, more or less in line with inflation.

“Pretty soon they may be rising faster than inflation, so that is easing a little bit, some of the pressures that everyone was having.”

Andrew Bailey “has to say that interest rates are going to stay high because he wants to influence inflationary expectations.”

“We know that the Bank of England has been attacked for not handling the whole thing properly.

“So, what they want to show now is that they’re going to be serious about this and therefore determined to reduce the rate of inflation.”

“What we’re seeing is very similar to the reaction in the US where they also kept rates unchanged the day earlier, and they said more or less the same thing.”

Food Prices Falling

“What we’ve seen is that the consumer is moving away from the branded products so maybe there’s less demand and they’re trying to preserve the profit margins possibly, but the non-branded items are cheaper and people are gravitating to those.

“So what you’re seeing is that the supermarkets that have done best are the low cost ones like Aldi, and Lidl.

“Random items may remain quite high, but the reality is that the consumers are doing something different. Overall, what you’re seeing is that food price inflation is slowing down quite significantly as well.”