Most importantly, the rise was again driven partly by a fall in employment, of 57,000. This was the biggest drop since 1993.
This rise in bad debt, alongside the recent slowdown in consumer credit, suggests that households are starting to feel the pressure of their rapid build-up of debt in recent years.
Criticisms have been raised, but we have looked at it ourselves, and we believe the ONS figures do a good job of measuring online sales.
Overall, today's data lend tentative support to our view that the consumer spending slowdown has further to run.
