Gluten free cereal and reuseable cups added to 'nation's shopping basket'

Gluten free cereal, a pre-mixed spirit drink and a reusable cup are among items added to the nation’s “shopping basket” used to calculate inflation.

Reuseable coffee cups have been added to the ONS's shopping basket.

The “shopping basket” of items used by the by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in compiling the various measures of consumer price inflation are reviewed each year. Some items are taken out of the baskets and others are brought in to make sure the measures are up-to-date and representative of consumer spending patterns.

The ONS said that this year, 16 items have been added to the UK Consumer Prices Index and 14 items have been removed.

Individual fruit pies have been replaced by crumpets, while an MP4 player has been removed - although some prices of the music player will continue to be collected as part of a more widely-defined portable digital music player item.

Airport parking has also been introduced, to add to the cost of short-term parking typically used by shoppers, which is already included.

The gluten-free cereal represents an expansion of the ONS’s coverage of “free from” products, while the body said that vegetable crisps have been added to help aid interpretation of data in the crisps area where prices can be volatile “because of promotional activity from retailers”.

The report said: “Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. A convenient way of thinking about this is to imagine a very large “shopping basket” containing those goods and services bought by households. As the prices of the various items in the basket change over time, so does the total cost of the basket.”

Around 180,000 separate price quotations are collected every month in compiling the data, covering around 720 representative consumer goods and services. These prices are collected in around 140 locations across the UK, from the internet and over the phone.

Items which generate more than £400m of sales in a typical year are usually included in the basket, while where spending on items falls below the £100m, there has to be a “good reason” for their continuing inclusion.

The ONS said it wanted to reduce the number of items in the individual category and combined separate DVD player and Blu-ray disc players.Frozen chicken breasts have been removed because they have a lower weight than other uncooked chicken items.

Car batteries have been removed from the “spare parts and accessories” class because of the number of price quotes collected being low, while softwood has been chosen for removal in preference to MDF in the “materials for maintenance and repair” class because of MDF being more commonly used for do-it-yourself work around the home.

Fresh diced or minced turkey has been introduced as a direct replacement for turkey steaks, with research showing that diced or minced turkey is more readily available for pricing.