first reported by the Financial Times, external<\/a>, come after the Scottish National Party (SNP) pledged to introduce a similar policy in Scotland last month. However, its price cap would not be voluntary.<\/p>\nThe BRC dismissed the policy as “1970s style price controls” while one retailer described the idea as “crazy” and the act of a “desperate” government.<\/p>\n
Another told the BBC: “Ultimately what [the government] should do is stop all the other tax burdens and the prices will come down.”<\/p>\n
The rate of food price rises is currently 3.7% – while the overall rate of inflation stood at 3.3% in March.<\/p>\n
Some industry groups have warned the rate of food price rises could hit nearly 10% by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
One retailer said government policies, including rises in the national living wage and employers’ national insurance contributions, had increased costs in food supply chains.<\/p>\n
Others say price rises are being caused by a surge in fertiliser and animal feed prices since the US-Israel war with Iran effectively blocked their transport through the key Strait of Hormuz waterway.<\/p>\n
Helen Dickinson, BRC chief executive, said there was already “fierce competition between supermarkets”, which had driven down prices. <\/p>\n
“The challenge facing retailers is a combination of higher energy and commodity costs resulting from the Middle East conflict, and the soaring cost of the government’s domestic policies,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“We want to do more to help keep costs down for families,” the spokesperson added. The proposals, first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-593130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593130","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=593130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}