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The ONS said that some of the biggest price rises came from chocolate which increased at the fastest pace for almost 10 years.

The ONS found that 61% of "sandwich" carers were female.

It comes as the ONS faces a crisis of confidence in its work after concerns about the quality of its data.

Last month, the ONS's former head Sir Ian Diamond resigned with immediate effect due to health reasons.

The regulator said it would like more assurance that the ONS had sufficient steps in place to regularly review and improve sample design and representativeness, tackling bias, survey methodology, and imputation.