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Inflation is down below 1.7 per cent – the precise number is 1.68 per cent – and that means that it is now almost certain that the Bank of England will cut interest rates at its next meeting in three weeks’ time. It means too that the current recovery in house prices, now up around 3 per cent year on year, will get another boost.

And for everyone worrying about how Rachel Reeves will fill the “black hole” in the nation’s finances, with £40bn of spending cuts and tax rises reportedly in store, the prospect of lower mortgage costs will give modest cheer.

This decline in the consumer price index means that the UK now has lower inflation than the eurozone, at 1.8 per cent, and the US, where the headline rate is 2.4 per cent – though were it calculated on the same basis as the UK and Europe, it would be somewhat lower than that.

This is a cause for celebration, not just because inflation is below the Bank of England target of 2 per cent, but it is also below the Bank’s own projection of 2.1 per cent.

There is, however, a catch. This decline is driven by the fact that goods prices are actually lower than they were a year ago, and that there were some special factors at play, such as much lower airline fares and a fall in fuel prices at the pumps.

Inflation for the all-important services sector is still up 4.9 per cent year-on-year, and getting that down further will be crucial to inflation staying at or close to 2 per cent in the months ahead.

That movement in inflation through next year will determine how much further interest rates are likely to fall. At the moment the markets are also pricing in another cut from the Bank in December, which would........

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