Asda chairman Lord Rose warned that food prices will keep rising, and stay higher “for quite some time” due to the high production and ingredients costs.
The Conservative peer told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme that many families struggling with the cost of living crisis are “going to suffer”.
He said: “Chicken feed is going up, and all the other associated costs are going up – I see no quick solution to this.
“Pasta is made from durum wheat, and durum wheat has gone up in price, so that’s an inevitable cost increase.”
Lord Rose added: “What we all now have to do is maybe change our behaviours. I will personally look at my own behaviour – what things I need and what things I don’t need. The government can’t sort out all the problems but the government can do a few things. It could talk to industry. It could talk to the food retailers to make sure that we are cutting out every extra cost.”
Asda’s latest Income Tracker has revealed that UK households experienced the biggest fall in discretionary income on record in March 2022 due to soaring living costs.
As a result of rising living costs, household discretionary income has now fallen for the fifth consecutive month and is now at the lowest level in 19 months.
Lord Rose has called for “continuity across the four countries in the UK”. He said: “At the moment there are not uniform rules about the disposal of waste. There are not uniform rules about Covid. There are not uniform rules about all sorts of things.
“The government needs to look and say ‘how do we make things simpler?’. The government can’t solve all the problems. We together, all of us, need to think of thoughtful ways to make this better. At the end of the day, sadly, the consumer will also suffer.”
