Robert Peston

So he definitely agrees with you.

I mean, I suppose my take would be this.

There are issues around quite how...

competitive the supermarket sector is.

I have to say on one measure, it looks pretty competitive because the margin, that's the profit that supermarkets make as a percentage of sales is lower than in many other countries.

And that's normally some kind of measure of how competitive they are.

But actually, my view is simply this really, that if the government

thinks that there is price gouging going on or that prices are being kept too high and that profits are too high, the way to deal with that is to properly assess whether essentially super normal excess profits are being made and then tax those excess profits and

And then plough the money that you raise from those excess profits into either grants to people on low incomes or simply into subsidies for the foods that you think are important.

The problem with what has been discussed, and look, if I'm honest with you, I think it's very unlikely it'll see the light of...

day in the end, because it seems really very messy and complicated, but let's wait and see.

It's definitely bureaucratic.

There are all sorts of issues like, well, are you saying that it will only apply to Asda and Tesco and M&S and Sainsbury's?

But if you're a small shop, you can charge what you like.

If it became widely known,

which it would do if this happened, that prices of these real essentials were way lower in Tesco and Sainsbury's, then if you're a smaller shop, actually you're sort of in trouble at that point because you think there's going to be massive traffic away from you to the supermarkets.

I mean, so from all points of view, it feels to me like a sort of government intervention that could distort and actually have unforeseen consequences

consequences of a negative sort.

So as I say, if the government genuinely believes that there is excess profits, then just tax the excess profits and put the money back into lowering prices.

Now, it comes, of course, against the backdrop where today we actually saw a fall in inflation at a time when everybody's been warning inflation is about to go through the roof.