Ed Balls and Susanna Reid announced breaking news about inflation on Good Morning Britain (Image: ITV)
Good Morning Britian presenters Susanna Reid and Ed Balls halted the programme to present some breaking news about the economy, and it puts Chancellor Rachel Reeves under even more pressure. They announced inflation had held steady at 3% but that presents further issues as the figures pertain to last month.
Looking at the camera, Balls announced: “In breaking news this morning, the Office for National Statistics has just announced that the inflation rate in the UK remained unchanged at 3% in February. That, of course, doesn’t cover the period since the conflict in Iran began, which has already seen rising costs at the fuel pumps.” Cutting to their correspondent, Louisa Jameson, who was outside Downing Street, he pointed out: “Of course, the pressures are going to be upwards in the coming weeks and months, and that’s not just on fuel and inflation, but also, in particular, on energy prices. Rachel Reeves said yesterday, though she’s not going to be doing support for all families, targeting it on those in greatest need, which will put pressure on her, because many people will lose out when their energy bills rise.”
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Jameson concurred with this analysis. “Let’s just look quickly at that inflation figure, because, as you say, it is for February before this conflict began,” she said.
“It reflects a time when the Government was quite optimistic about inflation going down this year. And actually, just reading the details from the Office for National Statistics, it says that the 3% figure is unchanged because some things went up and other things went down to offset that.
“Clothing prices went up, but actually, interestingly, fuel prices went down significantly. And, of course, that has changed very much since the conflict broke out in Iran.
“Let’s take a look at what petrol and diesel prices have done since that conflict broke out. The average cost of petrol has risen by 15p, hitting more than 140.8p on Monday. Diesel prices have surged to more than 170.3p over the same period, a rise of 30.1p and none of that is reflected in today’s inflation figures. Instead, Rachel Reeves has found herself, as she put it, planning for every possible eventuality in terms of the economic impact of this conflict,” Jameson explained.
Good Morning Britain announced breaking news which puts Rachel Reeves under pressure (Image: Getty)
She continued: “She said in the Commons: ‘At times like this, when prices rise, people look to the government and say, what are you going to do to help?’ Well, the question this morning is, who are they going to help?
“Because Rachel Reeves, as you say, made it very clear that it is not going to be everybody as it was at the start of the conflict in Ukraine, when we all got help with our energy bill. She says now that that was a mistake. It costs too much money, and this time, the help will be targeted, and the reports are that it will go to people who are already on certain benefits, like Universal Credit and pension credit.
“But no decisions have been taken yet, and the Government does have some time to play with [that] because the energy price cap means that energy bills will actually fall next month, but it is when that price cap runs out in July that they are expected to go up significantly. It potentially leaves a lot of people who will struggle but will not find themselves getting help from the government.
“I have to say that this morning, oil prices have actually fallen slightly because of Donald Trump said that negotiations to end the war are happening now. He’s also, though reported to be sending us ground troops, said to be in the region, and experts say, unless there really is an end in sight to this conflict, we won’t see any major change in oil prices over the longer term.”
