U.K. Inflation Hits 40-Year High, Putting Government on Defensive

LONDON—The U.K.’s annual rate of inflation jumped to a forty-year-high in April, the highest level recorded by an industrialized nation since the start of the global price surge last year.

Consumer prices in April were 9% higher than a year earlier, a jump from 7% in March and the highest inflation rate since March 1982, the Office for National Statistics said. The pace in consumer price rises in the U.K. is now the highest recorded by one of the Group of Seven rich economies in about a year.