CPI inflation – the Government’s target measure – fell to 1.3% in February, down from 1.4% in the previous month, helped by continued weakness in clothing prices following the January sales.

A combination of continued special offers, particularly on women’s clothing, lower prices for some new stock, and weaker than usual price recoveries for menswear bucked the normal trend to leave clothing prices overall broadly unchanged compared with January. By contrast, last year prices rose by more than 1% in February.

Inflation was also pegged back by price reductions this February across a range of recreational items including toys, garden products, audio-visual and photographic goods, compared with increased prices last year.

Further downward effects came from basics including food, mainly fresh vegetables, and also petrol, where price increases last February have dropped out of the annual comparison.

By contrast, price recoveries for furniture and furnishings following the sales this year were stronger than a year ago, dampening the overall decline in CPI inflation. There was also an upward effect from increased household bills for mobile phone calls, and gas and electricity charges, all of which were little changed a year earlier.

A similar combination of factors caused RPI inflation to fall back to 2.5% in February, down from 2.6% in January. The all-items RPI annual rate excluding mortgage interest payments (RPIX) also declined, from 2.4% in January to 2.3% in February.

The RPI and RPIX rates were also buoyed a little by stronger annual growth in some housing costs that are excluded from the CPI. In particular, house prices used to calculate depreciation - the amount homeowners need to spend to maintain their property - rose this year but fell a year ago.

As an internationally comparable measure of inflation, the CPI shows that the UK inflation rate has been among the lowest in the EU since the start of 2000. The EU 15 average inflation rate for January, the latest available, was 1.8% compared with 1.4% in the UK. The EU 15 rate was unchanged on the previous month.

The CPI measure has been adopted by the Government for its UK inflation target. The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee is required to achieve a target of 2 per cent, subject to a margin of one percentage point on either side.

RPI is the retail prices index- the uses of RPI and its derivatives include indexation of pensions, state benefits and index-linked gilts.