Politics ‘Retailers to pricey for petrol and food’

WITH inflation currently running at 8%, the majority of the population are struggling with the cost of living.

In June, the prime minister said that the public will be able to judge him in ‘six months, nine months, a year’ on how he is doing and whether the economy is healthier.

The clock is ticking for Rishi Sunak, assuming he remembers one of his five pledges to halve inflation was made on 4 January this year.

The government is struggling to reduce inflation and the announcement made this week by the governor of the Bank of England indicated that at least one factor needs to be addressed with a bit more urgency. Andrew Bailey, accused retailers of putting “Further strain on households by overcharging consumers on petrol and other goods at a time when UK authorities are struggling to curb inflation.”

Things must be bad, even Grant Shapps has noticed. This week (ending 8 July), the energy secretary accused petrol retailers of using motorists as “cash cows” following the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) report of petrol companies “Charging more because of reduced competition.”

Cllr John Wells

Labour

doing so, to pass on costs and increase profits by avoiding a sensitive price hike that is more likely to attract the ire of customers.”

WE all have stories of relatives or friends who are waiting for medical procedures for months, or even years on end.

And stories of people who are stuck in hospital unable to leave due to a lack of social care provision for them.

There is a huge bottle-neck across the NHS with vital beds being taken by those who could be treated outside of hospital.

The word ‘crisis’ is used too freely at the moment but, on its 75th anniversary, crisis is the only word to describe our National Health Service.

Research published this week by the Liberal Democrats revealed 2,653 ‘bed days’ were lost to delayed discharges from Salisbury NHS Trust in May. Of these, the majority of bed days lost involved patients who have remained in hospital for three weeks or more.

2,653. That is over seven years of care because people are unable to leave the hospital.

For me, this is absolutely appalling and a true crisis.

Salisbury District Hospital has had to declare multiple critical incidents in the past year, in part due to ‘increasing number of

Chair

of Environment and Climate Committee (Salisbury City Council)

Food retailers obviously refute these accusations. At this week’s shareholders meeting the chair of Sainsbury’s declared “We are not profiteering and we are not rip-off retailers. We make 3p on every pound we sell.”

With rising food prices, shoppers struggle to make ends meet; there is a far more clandestine price increase creeping up on them. Food companies are regularly reducing the size of their products but not the price. Known as “shrinkflation”, retailers keep prices and size of packaging the same but reduce the quantity of the product.

According to a report in The Guardian (16.06.23): “A growing list of companies are

There is no legal requirement for food manufacturers to alert customers of a change in product size, so long as the new quantity and unit price is appropriately displayed.

Andrew Bailey also responded to increasing concerns about ‘greedflation’, whereby companies use high inflation as a cover to raise prices even further to increase profit margins.

According to Bailey this was having “very difficult effects” and called for “steps to be taken to make things fairer, and to save money for people by doing so.”

Curbing inflation has been the justification of the government’s continued stubborn refusal to negotiate an acceptable pay settlement for an increasingly demoralised workforce in schools and hospitals.

Apart from damaging morale and exacerbating long-term issues of recruitment and retention, this approach does not appear to address the immediate need to bring down inflation and threatens one of the prime minister’s other pledges, to reduce hospital waiting lists.