MPs and retailers hit out at UK plan to cap basic food prices

[mountaineer]

MPs and retailers hit out at UK plan to cap basic food prices
Initiative aims to curb rampant food price inflation but has split Tory party and angered supermarkets
Lucy Fisher, Delphine Strauss and Laura Onita in London
May 28, 2023

Conservative MPs and retailers have hit out at UK government plans to encourage supermarkets to cap the price of food staples, in a fierce backlash.

Health secretary Steve Barclay said on Sunday that ministers were in talks with retailers about how to “address the very real concerns” many Britons harbour about food inflation and the cost of living, including the possibility of introducing voluntary price caps.

Barclay told the BBC that the government was “working constructively” with supermarkets.

However, Andrew Opie of the British Retail Consortium, which represents major supermarkets, said the plan “will not make a jot of difference” to high food prices, which are the result of soaring energy, transport and labour costs.

Accusing ministers of keeping food inflation high despite falling commodity prices by presiding over a “muddle” of new regulation, he said: “Rather than recreating 1970s-style price controls, the government should focus on cutting red tape.”   ...

Financial Times

See also Rishi Sunak will ask stores to cap basic food prices , from The Telegraph.

Wall Street Silver
@WallStreetSilv
It looks like the UK govt is going for price controls next. These clowns are going to make every mistake from the 1970s to try to hide their mistakes. They printed trillions and they don’t know how to fix it.

[Kamaji]

Price controls never work.  One would have thought that this lesson had been learned the hard way decades ago.

[godblessRonaldReagan]

Price controls never work.  One would have thought that this lesson had been learned the hard way decades ago.

Yep, just ask Nixon.

[mountaineer]

Just like Biden, the Sunak administration would rather punish the innocent than solve the problem.

[PeteS in CA]

"That trick never works!"

"This time for sure!"

[GtHawk]

"That trick never works!"

"This time for sure!"

This time for sure seems to be the rallying cry for communists, with the addition of 'nobody has implemented it right', by American communists.

[sneakypete]

Uhhhh,retail prices on EVERYTHING have  the wholesale prices as their base. Retailers can jack their prices  up 1,000 percent if they want to,but some other retailer selling for 30 percen (just to pick a number) over wholesale is going to put them out of business.

[sneakypete]

Price controls never work.  One would have thought that this lesson had been learned the hard way decades ago.

@Kamaji

Seems like every generation has to learn this the hard way,doesn't it?

Other than the "comrades",of course. They are incapable of learning anything.