Morrisons has reported better than expected Christmas trading results with like-for-like sales up by 2% in the nine weeks to 1st January.

Chief executive David Potts said: 'This Christmas we made further improvements to the customer shopping trip. We stocked more of what our customers wanted to buy, more tills were open more often, and product availability improved as over half of sales went through our new ordering system. Both like-for-like and total sales grew, which was very encouraging.”

Yesterday (9th January) Aldi reported a 15% increase in sales during December, with luxury product lines faring particularly well.