The Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) has been developed as a comparable measure of inflation for Member States of the European Union. It was used to monitor performance against the convergence criterion for price stability in the Maastricht Treaty. From January 1999, it will be used by the European Central Bank as the target measure of inflation for the European Monetary Union area.
The UK HICP was first published in February 1997: the index started in January 1996 and the first 12-month inflation figures were for January 1997. An earlier article in Economic Trends gave the background to the HICP and its uses, described how it is constructed and how it compares with the domestic measure of inflation, the UK Retail Prices Index (RPI).
The ONS has now constructed estimates of the UK HICP back to 1988 and indicative figures for 1975-1987. This article presents these new estimates and explains how they have been derived. A comparison is also presented of the historical HICP series against RPI excluding mortgage interest payments (RPIX), which starts in 1975. RPIX is preferred to RPI for this comparison because the inclusion of mortgage interest payment in the latter can obscure the picture.
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