Chief Secretary to the Treasury to give evidence to Lords Economic Affairs Committee

She will be joined by Sir Robert Stheeman, Chief Executive of the UK Debt Management Office and Steve Farrington, Deputy Director of EU Exit Analysis at the Treasury.

The evidence session will contribute to the Committee's inquiry into the use of the retail price index (RPI) as a measure of inflation.

Questions the Committee is likely to cover in this session at 3.35pm include:

• Does the Treasury agree with the chair of the UK Statistics Authority that RPI is an “inadequate” measure of inflation?
• Would the Treasury welcome the abolition of RPI?
• Does the Government want to move to one official measure of inflation?
• Is it acceptable for the statistical authorities to treat RPI as a legacy measure when it is still in widespread use?
• Can the Government change the inflation index on existing index-linked gilts from RPI to consumer price index (CPI)?
• Why is the advice of the statistical authorities being ignored by the Government and RPI is continued to be used for uprating rail fares and calculating the interest on student loans?
• Why are public sector pensions and the state pension uprated by CPI, while the majority of private sector pensions are uprated by RPI?

The Committee recently published a call for evidence to this inquiry. Click here to find out more.

This evidence session, which is open to the public, will start at 3.35pm on Tuesday 10 July in Committee Room 1 of the House of Lords.