The Office for National Statistics calculates inflation excluding items – such as energy and food – where prices can fluctuate because of what is happening on global markets.

United States consumer prices increased in October after two straight months of declines as the cost of goods and services rose, signs of firming inflation that further support expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next month.

Earlier today, the BLS reported that the seasonally adjusted CPI for all urban consumers rose 0.2% (2.4% annualized rate) in October.

Based on a separate measure, the retail-price index, inflation was at 0.7 percent in October, the lowest since March 2009. “As long as oil prices follow the current futures curve, petrol price inflation should rise from minus 14 per cent in October to about 0 per cent in February, adding about half a percentage point to CPI inflation“.

Inflation figures will increase again in the new year, when last January’s 0.9% drop in the CPI will cease to bear down on the annual inflation rate. And prices continued to plunge on the forecourts last month, with fuel falling by 14 per cent on an annual basis. The index climbed 1.99% to 6,268.76 with engineering company Smiths Group up 10%, while Rolls Royce climbed 5% and BAE Systems up 2%.

Policy makers have said they’ll need to be convinced that overall inflation is on a stable path before raising the benchmark interest rate. Americans have been shielded from inflation largely because of lower energy prices coupled with a strong dollar that has made imports such as clothes and cars less expensive. Under this heading, the CPI for white bread was 324.1, down 0.5% from September but up 1.7% from October 2014.

Reiterating his stance that a rate cut was as plausible as a rate rise, he said that a hike in the cost of borrowing now would ‘increase unnecessarily the chances of the economy falling below critical velocity’.

He added: “Consumer price inflation could well start inching up year-on-year from November”. The core CPI reading actually came in at 1.9% on the year-over-year reading for October. In the preceding month, Industrial production had fallen by 0.2%.

The cost of hospital services shot up 2 percent from September, the largest monthly increase recorded for this category.

Real hourly earnings increased by 0.2% for all employees.

Airline fares rose 1.5 percent, ending a string of three consecutive declines.