Helen Crane

The government could ask supermarkets to cap the price of essential foods like milk and eggs and bread in exchange for the government relaxing and delaying some regulations that retailers might not like.

So like things on recyclable packaging and things like that.

People are obviously quite flabbergasted by it.

A city analyst has said the Treasury is losing its mind in an orgy of neo-Soviet policy ideas.

On a serious note, a lot of people are struggling with the cost of food shops.

The price of shopping has gone up a lot in the last few years.

But, you know, this has been looked at before when the cost of living crisis a few years ago started.

There are investigations into whether the supermarkets were doing what's called price gouging, which is essentially putting prices up over and above the amount that their costs are going up just to sort of make a profit out of customers.

And it's been found repeatedly that, you know, that they're not doing that.

Supermarkets margins are actually really fine on a lot of products.

And the boss of M&S has come out and talked about this this week.

And he said on bananas, they actually make a minus six percent margin.

So, you know, not to feel too sorry for supermarket bosses, but they are essentially selling some some things at a loss.

And I just think the fact the government has come out and said this is a bit rich, really.

You know, if you want to make it easier for people to afford their shopping, maybe don't do things like freeze the income tax thresholds for years and years and years.

You know, sort out the housing market so people aren't paying ludicrous amounts in rent.

Yeah, but not a quick fix, though, is it?

No, it's not a quick fix.

But I think there's an element of this, which is, you know, if people are struggling to afford...

I think it depends on the situation you're in.