Chancellor advised she is ‘solely going to make the scenario worse’ with controversial plan
Reeves warned meals caps will backfire badly (Picture: Getty)
Rachel Reeves has been warned that her “Soviet-style” plans to strain supermarkets to cap meals costs may push the price of a weekly store even greater. In a determined try to regulate spiralling cost-of-living pressures, it was prompt the Chancellor would urge grocery chiefs to herald a worth cap.
However Shadow Atmosphere Secretary Victoria Atkins savaged the transfer, telling the Each day Specific that Labour’s “expensive pink tape and the vindictive household farm tax have all contributed to this meals and farming emergency.” Ms Atkins, who has joined the Specific marketing campaign to axe the household farm tax, warned the Chancellor’s proposal was “solely going to make the scenario worse as it would bake in excessive meals costs and result in empty cabinets”. She mentioned: “The Conservatives have warned about this since Reeves’s first Funds.
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Learn extra: Rachel Reeves plots £1bn household vacation ‘stealth tax’
“Six months in the past, I despatched recommendations from companies to ministers to attempt to ease meals worth rises. They did nothing, and now the Chancellor is desperately in search of a method out. The issue is, her Soviet-style answer is barely going to make the scenario worse as it would bake in excessive meals costs and result in empty cabinets.”
Critics level to surging taxes, vitality costs and enterprise charges – all pushed by Labour’s “anti-business practices” – as the true causes of hovering meals costs.
When Labour got here to energy, it launched the household farm tax, which dragged a lot of Britain’s farms into demise duties for the primary time, prompting this newspaper to launch its Cease The Household Farm Tax campaign.
Campaigners warned the coverage would break up farms that had been in the identical household for generations and threaten Britain’s meals safety.
The Lincolnshire MP’s intervention comes as excessive road grandees additionally panned the Chancellor’s intervention, warning that worth controls threat distorting markets and driving up prices elsewhere.
However the Treasury distanced itself from accusations of neo-communist insurance policies, with a spokesman insisting the Chancellor “has been clear we wish to do extra to assist preserve prices down for households and can set out extra element in the end”.
It’s understood that government-mandated worth caps usually are not at present being thought of, with ministers as a substitute pointing to different cost-easing measures, together with freezing prescription costs and rail fares.
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