Should the government set food prices?
5/20/202637 min
Would a voluntary agreement between supermarket bosses and the Chancellor to cap the prices of food basics help those struggling on low incomes? Is the biggest threat to the UK now higher inflation or higher unemployment? And could Andy Burnham, as Prime Minister, take control of water and energy without destroying the public finances?
Steph and Robert discuss Rachel Reeves’ plans to protect living standards from Trump’s Iran war shock, and try to work out what Andy Burnham means when he says his “Manchesterism” is the end of neoliberalism.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRobert Peston· Host0:01
Somehow the supermarkets would limit those prices in return for the government waiving certain restrictions. They, having talked to the supermarket bosses, they almost all say this is completely and utterly barking mad.
Steph McGovern· Host0:15
Clear message to people, isn't it? The government is gonna make your shopping bill not get any bigger, but reality is it probably would put it up.
Robert Peston· Host0:22
Andy Burnham is the Messiah. He's gonna solve everything. And this has been a problem with water privatization. It's why it should never have been privatized in the first place.
Steph McGovern· Host0:30
The process, this kind of essentially deregulation, has cost £134 million. Will it reap the rewards that you want? It's a [censored] show, quite literally. Support for this episode comes from Octopus Energy, and the founder and CEO, Greg Jackson, is with us now. And I wanna ask about oil prices. Obviously, they're very high at the moment. What's your advice for a company worried about them?
Greg Jackson0:53
First of all, uh, if you use a lot of electricity, it may be possible to get electricity tariffs where you get charged less at certain times of day. And a lot of businesses have been able to benefit by shifting their electricity consumption. They still use as much energy, they just pay less for it. Of course, things like heating space can be very expensive, and finding ways to do that more efficiently by, uh, heating to maybe eighteen degrees rather than twenty-one can make a very big difference. But of course, look, the real solution is that Britain needs to escape from this dependency on the global fossil fuel price. And that means more electrification, disconnect