The Scottish and Westminster governments face urgent calls to combat the cost of living crisis that threatens to force many into poverty.
The Daily Record spoke to shoppers who unanimously believe that supermarket price rises are going off the scale.
Our snapshot shop of 15 items at one supermarket today revealed a 19 per cent leap on prices for identical goods last January.
The hardship is being felt by shoppers at most supermarkets, particularly those with families to support, as wages stagnate and all costs are spiralling upwards fast.
Scottish Labour’s public finance spokesperson Paul Sweeney will use today’s Holyrood debate on the Scottish budget to demand better wages for low paid public sector workers to counter the emerging crisis.
He said: “In the debate on the budget I’ll be calling on the Scottish Government to go much further in its pay deals with its own public sector workers, especially in low-paid sectors like social care, and are going to be hardest hit by recent price spikes.
“They also need to reverse the decade of disproportionate cuts to local councils, so that food poverty initiatives are properly resourced.”
Sweeney also calls for the UK government to raise the minimum wage to a proper living wage of £15 an hour, along with a raise to the level of Statutory Sick Pay.
He said: “This would enable greater trade union organisation to bargain for higher wages across the economy, especially for those on the lowest incomes.”
He claimed that shopping price rises are a hammer blow, saying: ”With inflation now well over 5 per cent - the highest level in 30 years - the biggest driver of that spike in prices has been food and non-alcoholic drinks.
“These are essential items, so those on those on the lowest incomes feel that hit the most.
“A basic essential like butter is up nine per cent on the year, while 500g of pasta is up a shocking 141%, as supermarkets now dilute their discount ranges.
“That is why it beggars belief that the millionaire Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak has just stripped away £1,040 a year from families on Universal Credit, which is pushing more and more people into reliance on foodbanks.”
The calls for action come as families brace themselves for energy bills leaping £600 this year. That’s on top of household gas bills rising by 28.1 per cent and electricity bills 18 per cent in 2021,
Boris Johnson is also set to raise National Insurance contributions by 1.25 per cent in April.
Costs are also through the rood for petrol and almost all goods like cars, clothes and services.
Scot Lib Dem economy spokesperson Willie Rennie berated the Scottish Government for forcing councils to rise taxes at a time of crisis.
He said: “Alongside rising fuel and electricity prices, families have seen the cost of their weekly shop soar.
“What’s worse is that the Scottish Government is bullying councils into raising council tax so from April there will be an additional burden that people will have to plan for.
“This is a budget that is out of touch with how the average Scot lives. There is a real risk of more people falling into poverty as a result of this cost of living crunch.
“A good place to start would be by raising disability benefits by six per cent in line with projected inflation, rather than the proposed 3.1 per cent, but there is clearly a lot of work to be done.”
Despite our shopping basic snapshot today finding just a 19 per cent increase, a Twitter thread by anti-poverty campaigner. Jack Monroe detailed more worrying trends.
The blogger found the Retail Price Index used for this 5.4 per cent inflation calculation “grossly underestimates the real cost of inflation as it happens to people with the least”.
She showed how “value” rice soared by 344% increase and many budget lines have simply disappeared.
Her work has pressed the Office for National Statistics to collate an index to share more realistically how food prices are rocketing.
