AN ACQUAINTANCE of mine used to work as a producer in daytime television, responsible among other duties for maintaining the morale of star presenters. One of them was more than ordinarily sensitive about her figure. Upward fluctuations in her vital statistics could have a decidedly lowering effect on her morale. So among my friend’s tasks was the solemn duty of cutting out the size 16 label on the presenter’s clothes and then sewing in the label from an identical garment two sizes smaller. Naturally, wardrobe costs on the show soared, but it was considered a price worth paying to keep the presenter, and thus the nation, in good humour.

My acquaintance has gone on to even greater success in the media. But, glittering as his career has been, I wonder if he wouldn’t have done even better had he gone into politics. After all, the skill with which he masked worrying developments by simply altering the statistics, the better to sustain a feelgood factor, would recommend him for a post in Gordon Brown’s Treasury.

Last year the Chancellor changed the way we measure inflation in this country. The Bank of England was ordered to target a cost of living measure known as the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. According to the latest CPI figures, inflation in Britain is just 1.4 per cent. One of the economy’s most vital statistics, the level of prices, appears to be appealingly stable. Which will be news to anyone wrestling with the household accounts. For those of us who have to pay our own bills, instead of getting the State to pick them up, cannot have escaped noticing the relentless rise in the real cost of living.

As the Times Economics Editor, Lea Paterson, pointed out on Saturday, the annual cost of running an average home in Britain has increased by almost £1,000 in just two years. By 2005, according to Lea’s rigorous analysis, the cost of living for householders will have increased by 13 per cent since 2003. So how can the Chancellor maintain that real inflation is still one tenth of that figure? Simple. Do as my friend in television did, and cut out the inconvenient figures. The Consumer Price Index doesn’t include rising housing costs, such as increased mortgage payments and galloping council tax increases. Repayments on a standard £60,000 mortgage have risen by £680 over a two-year period, that’s a 15 per cent increase. If you’re unlucky enough to live in the South East, and to have to compete in a much more expensive property market, you ’ll have been disproportionately hit. Not just because your mortgage will be larger, but also because Mr Brown’s stamp duty increases, which take no account of regional factors, will penalise you more when you move. And the Chancellor’s decision to take money away from local authorities in the South to further subsidise Labour area in the North will have driven your council tax up even farther.

From the disposable income you have left, you will also now have to shell out more for increased gas and electricity bills, dearer petrol and mounting insurance premiums. Should you, as a responsible couple, decide to work even harder to pay the bills, then you’ll find the cost of extra childcare punishing because you will have to pay your nanny, and her tax, out of your already taxed income. If you are working all the hours the Lord sends anyway, because you aspire to educating your child privately, you should note that school fees have also been increasing steadily, by around 7 per cent a year. All because this Government’s national insurance increases, as well as proliferating regulations, have made independent education even more expensive to provide.

The truth about the Consumer Price Index is that it no longer measures real inflation and, in particular, it comes nowhere near measuring the real CPI — the Cost of Personal Independence. The effect of everything this Government has done is to penalise those who try, honourably, to make provision for themselves and decrease their reliance on the State. Buying your own home, aspiring to move up the property ladder, passing on that capital to your children and investing in their education have all been made disproportionately more expensive by this Chancellor.

These additional costs are a consequence of the Chancellor’s need to pay for the massive growth in the size of Government. Increased government borrowing helps to push up interest rates, while increased spending drives up taxes. Although the label Mr Brown may have stuck on the economy tells us things are stable, the reality is that we are all now feeling the pinch.

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