Reeves Urges Supermarkets to Cap Food Prices; SNP Pledges Devolved Caps
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is today pressuring UK supermarkets to cap food prices in an attempt to limit the inflation unleashed by the Iran war; the Guardian frames the announcement as supermarkets being “urged to consider voluntary price caps on essential foods”. The Scottish National party pledged to use its devolved public health powers to fix prices on 20-50 essential items in Scotland — including bread, milk, cheese and eggs — setting up a parallel intervention if Westminster cannot deliver. The food-inflation question lands at PMQs today, having already been raised by Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey at the previous PMQs session.
Davey told the Commons that food prices would rise by 10% this year as “farmers’ costs soar”, urging the government to introduce a “Good Food Bill” with long-term food security targets and farmer-investment provisions. The intervention is the first substantive cost-of-living policy announcement of the post-cabinet-ring-fence period: it lands in the same news cycle as yesterday’s £102.7bn HS2 cost confirmation, the 47-37 YouGov polling on the Burnham-Starmer leadership question, and the Lammy criminal-responsibility-age intervention. The cap mechanic is voluntary, not legislative; the SNP’s devolved framework is more directly operative and could provide a UK-wide test case if launched first.