The headline rate of inflation in the UK has risen to 5.1% – its highest rate in a decade. The speed of increase has taken forecasters by surprise – last month the Bank of England said it expected inflation to peak at 5%, but not until April next year.
It is the measure of how much prices are rising and falling and is tracked by several different indices. The main measure used by economists is the consumer prices index (CPI), which records the cost of a basket of 700 items including food,
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