National Office for Statistics figures out later this morning are expected to show an increase in the consumer prices index (CPI) to 4%, up from 3.7% in December.
But authors of a report in the respected journal of the International Association for Official Statistics, including a former World Bank economist, said the figures are misleading.
The report concludes: “The official price indices currently available for the UK are misleading the general public and are of doubtful relevance for policy purposes,” according to the Guardian.
CPI measured-inflation, which Britain switched to in 2003, does not include housing and statisticians also include improvements in the quality of products to assess changes in the cost of living.
The journal article said statisticians or politicians were not deliberately misleading the public about inflation.
But more weight was being given to questionable economic theory than to the public’s need for a clear and transparent measure of price inflation, it says.
“The end result is that politicians may make bad decisions because they are using bad statistics and the general public loses faith in the statisticians because of the gap they see between their own daily shopping experience and the official measure of inflation,” it warns.
