Darren Jones<\/a>, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said the conflict would probably continue to raise prices for energy, food and flights in the coming months as potential issues around energy supplies affect production, rather than lead to shortages on supermarket shelves.<\/p>\nThe UK government has urged motorists to fill up their cars as usual amid higher prices at the pumps and for air travellers not to change their plans over potential jet fuel shortages.<\/p>\n
Jones told the BBC\u2019s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: \u201cYou\u2019re going to see prices go up a bit as a consequence of what Donald Trump has done in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s probably going to come online not just in the next few weeks, but the next few months. There\u2019s going to be a long tail from this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked how long higher prices might remain, Jones suggested it would be around eight months after the strait of Hormuz was unblocked and a de-escalation of the conflict had taken place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our best guess is eight-plus months from the point of resolution that you\u2019ll see economic impacts coming through the system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump announced an indefinite extension of the US ceasefire with Iran last week that paused most of the fighting, but further efforts towards ending the conflict have been unsuccessful after the US president told his envoys not to travel to Pakistan for talks at the weekend.<\/p>\n
The UK government is stepping up planning for how to offset the impact, focusing on the live monitoring of stock levels and what plans are in place for addressing supply chain disruption.<\/p>\n
Jones said: \u201cThe government here in the UK, the work that I\u2019m doing with the prime minister is looking at all of those things and saying, \u2018What can we do within our power to help people to get through those difficult times?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The government is also looking to secure stocks of carbon dioxide, which is used in the food industry and by breweries to make drinks fizzy, as well as for defence purposes and medical uses such as MRI scanning.<\/p>\n
Jones said he was seeking to ensure there was an adequate supply of beer for fans watching the men\u2019s football World Cup, which starts on 11 June.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI raised this issue because if there is a problem with jet fuel on holidays and carbon dioxide on beer, the summer might be pretty depressing for people, but we\u2019re doing everything we can to make sure that it\u2019s not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Liberal Democrats have called for a bill to be included in the next king\u2019s speech in May to put food security at the top of the government\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK faces higher prices for food and fuel for at least eight months after the war in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-552734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}