Dear Sir,

In your article RPI reform a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, says ONS head you report that I now support making changes to the way the RPI is calculated. To be clear, as I have said for a number of years, I believe that the RPI is a poor measure of inflation and there are far better alternatives.

It must be a question of when not if there is a move towards these alternatives.

However, our previous consultation showed there remains significant value to users in maintaining the existing RPI. Any moves to use alternative measures of inflation for indexation needs to be carefully choreographed with others given the impact of making a change. In addition, changes to the calculation of RPI require an evaluation by the Bank of England and need the agreement of HM Treasury.

John Pullinger
National Statistician