BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron said on Sunday he was concerned about a rise in inflation, but expressed his support for Bank of England Governor Mervyn King.

"If you look at the recent (inflation) figures, they are concerning because they are well outside what the Bank of England is meant to deliver," Cameron said on BBC television's Andrew Marr show.

"Inflation is extremely harmful, it destroys people's savings, we don't want to go back to having an inflation problem as we had in the past," he added.

Cameron said 2011 was going to be a -difficult year for Britons as cuts in public spending introduced by his Conservative-led coalition take effect.

But he said action was needed to cut a -deficit which is running at in excess of 10 percent of national output.

Inflation was at least a percentage point above the Bank of England's two percent target throughout 2010 and is forecast to approach four percent early this year after an increase in value added tax sales tax took effect last week.

Cameron said he thought the system whereby the central bank was free to set interest rates, introduced under a Labour government in 1997, was a good one.