John Lewis sees 'outstanding' Christmas sales

Strong sales of clothes and electrical items helped the department store, John Lewis, take more than half a billion pounds over Christmas.

It says like-for-like sales were up 6.2% in the final five weeks of last year.

However, John Lewis conceded that its performance was weaker in the first week of the post-Christmas sales period, down 4.8% from a year ago.

The managing director of John Lewis, Andy Street, says that despite their success he expects 2012 to be another difficult year.