Dr Emma Howard

And, you know, we saw the UN warning that they could potentially see food costs increasing somewhere between 15% and 20% this year.

So we are likely to see further inflation.

They will.

And so we are seeing.

And now another point is that we still need EU approval because what the government is proposing is cutting excise duty by an amount that is not allowed under EU rules.

So, you know, one might think we're pushing our luck with EU derogations, given we fought hard for the nitrates derogation, you know, our opposition to Mercosur.

So it remains to be seen whether this will be able to go through as it stands.

But if it does, I mean, Jack mentioned the size of the most recent announcement, but if you put it together with the previous package, that's almost three quarters of a billion extra spending that the government is doing.

And we saw figures from last week from the Department of Finance showing that spending this year was up 6.4% from last year.

And so the government had initially set a sustainable spending rule of 5%.

Minister Harris increased that and said they were going to stick to a 6% increase year on year.

And, you know, we were breaching it before this latest package of support was announced.

So that additional spending is itself going to further feed inflation in the economy.

We saw this, the impact of the government's repeated one-off measures in response to the Ukraine crisis.

So this package itself is itself going to be inflationary.

And that's likely then going to impact those lower income households more because lower income households spend a greater proportion of their income

on things like food and fuel compared to richer households who can well afford these price increases.

It is.

And, you know, that's the problem with this.

The government are talking about, you know, these are temporary and time-limited measures.