Seven groups now oppose Swinney’s food price cap – Daily Business

David Lonsdale: retailers are giving short shrift to a price cap (pic: DB Media Services)

First Minister and SNP Leader John Swinney will put his food price cap at the heart of the final week of election campaigning despite growing opposition to the plan.

Mr Swinney believes the proposal to limit the price of essential food items will ease the cost of living and that legislation can be pushed through quickly.

“As First Minister, I want to take action to support people – reducing the cost of your daily commute, capping the cost of essential foods in supermarkets and bringing down electricity bills with the fresh start of independence,” he says.

“The SNP wants to lower your bills – and the other parties are trying to stop us.”

However, it is not just rival parties that oppose the plan. Seven organisations are now calling for it to be dropped, claiming it would be unworkable, damaging to retailers and fail to achieve Mr Swinney’s aim of cutting household bills.

The Federation of Independent Retailers (the Fed) in Scotland has added its voice to a group that includes the Scottish Retail Consortium, the Institute for Public Policy Research and the business network Prosper.

Yesterday, the Fed’s Scottish president Uthayakumar Soundararajan, who runs a shop in Edinburgh,  said: “We are concerned this will distort trade and do nothing to help shops or their customers. Across the sector, retail is a very competitive market and small shops play an important part in it.

“The devil will be in the detail on this, but questions remain about how it will have an impact on different retailers – big and small, online and the High Street, and those across the border in England – and it could cause unnecessary complexity and uncertainty.”

Also opposed to the plan is the Food & Drink Federation Scotland, the Scottish Grocers’ Federation, NFU Scotland and the Federation of Independent Retailers.

Former SNP food minister Fergus Ewing described the proposed cap on items such as milk and bread as “half baked”, and warned it could break competition law.

Mr Swinney insists it would be legal, but there have been warnings that it could prompt a challenge in the courts from big supermarkets who would be the main target of the cap.

John Swinney: living costs need to come down (pic: DB Media Services)

Those claiming it would fail to achieve its aims say that if some items are capped, retailers would simply raise the price of other goods in order to maintain their margins.

Speaking about the growing opposition to the plan, David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, said: “This is a significant intervention from small retailers and the latest in a growing chorus of voices from across industry and civic Scotland giving short shrift to the idea of a government-mandated cap on food prices in shops.”

Mr Swinney’s pledge to cut electricity bills “with the fresh start of independence” has also been widely condemned as he has produced no detail on how this would be achieved, other than claiming he would split electricity from the gas market, a process that has eluded the UK government and its advisers.

It is also conditional on Scotland becoming independent and Mr Swinney has also failed to explain how this would be achieved, given that the legal route has been blocked and the UK government opposes it.

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