Food prices in first monthly fall for two years

Food prices saw their first monthly fall in two years in September, but fuel prices rose sharply, official figures show.

It came as the overall rate of inflation held steady at 6.7%, ending a run of three consecutive monthly falls.

The price of milk, cheese and eggs all decreased, easing the pressure at supermarket tills, the Office for National Statistics said.

But petrol increased by 5.1p per litre, hitting drivers at the pumps.

Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the Office for National Statistics, said there may be “some disappointment” around the unchanged inflation figure but that was “not unusual”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If you look across Europe, many countries have seen either periods lately of no change or in some cases of actual increases in the headline rate, before they started to resume their falls.”

He added: “There may be some disappointment out there, but of course, we have seen significant falls in headline inflation over the last six months.”

“As we have seen across other G7 countries, inflation rarely falls in a straight line, but if we stick to our plan then we still expect it to keep falling this year,” Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said.