Budget does nothing to ease food price pressures, warns FDF

Karen Betts, Chief Executive, The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), said:

“This Budget offers nothing to ease the pressures food and drink manufacturers are under. Instead, one of the Chancellor’s flagship announcements, removing tariffs from some food and drink products, will have no meaningful impact on consumer prices. But it will undermine British factories and their workers, grappling with much higher costs, producing the same products.  

“Food and drink manufacturing should be central to the Government’s growth and reindustrialisation agenda. But time and again, we are treated as an afterthought. The Treasury in particular has persistently failed to recognise the importance of food and drink manufacturing to jobs and prosperity across the length and breadth of the UK.

“Nor does this Budget attempt to address the acute pressures our sector is currently facing. Very high energy costs combined with overly complex regulation is turning investment away from our sector and to competitors overseas. This is eroding confidence across the entire food system.

“The Government has chosen not to extend energy support, available to other manufacturing sectors, to food and drink businesses, which would have helped to strengthen our sector in the face of overwhelming pressures. Our energy costs are double the European average, and this is hitting investment, jobs and growth. If government is serious about tackling the cost of living, there is plenty they can do. But today they have made a clear choice to do nothing.”