HIGH prices are causing “continued pain” for people across the country despite a reported fall in inflation today, according to Labour’s shadow levelling up minister.

Alex Norris told GB News: “I’d be a little bit cautious in how we present this. People up and down the country, your viewers will find that the statistics today have validated what they knew, that the prices are going up at a significant rate.

“It’s good that the rate of inflation has decreased, but it hasn’t decreased by very much. We’re still a significantly level, we’re an outlier level with many similar countries.

“I’d be cautious about saying this is good news because it continued paying for lots of people up and down the country.”

In a discussion with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he continued: “It’s sticking plaster politics that’s causing this mass. You need a long term commitment to economy to an economy that’s growing, that’s got skilled work across all communities, which is why the Jaguar Land Rover [gigafactory] announcement is so welcome.

“We need that across the country. That’s what true levelling up is. There are things we can do in the meantime, like the support that we’ve been pushing for mortgages, like the support on energy bills, but this will be a long run and is a reflection of 13 years of mismanagement of our economy and those are the challenges that any future government will deal with.”

Asked about the controversy over the closure of Nigel Farage’s bank accounts at Coutts, he said: “I myself have been battling my bank this week related to the Politically Exposed Persons regulations.

“Those are important regulations…ministers trying to ratchet up the debate and trying to inflame the debate and are doing that because they want to distract from the fact that we’ve got really high inflation and dreadful news on the NHS today.”