Britain's Office for National Statistics said on Thursday that April's consumer price inflation reading of 3.5% had been overstated by 0.1 percentage points due to an error in car tax data provided by the government.

UK inflation was overstated by 0.1 percentage points in April owing to an error in tax figures provided by a government department, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday, in the latest blow to confidence in the quality of economic data.

Britain’s statistics agency said it overstated the official inflation rate due to a mistake in numbers it was given on vehicle taxes, the latest in a string of errors to plague the country’s economic data.