Iceland boss pleads with No 10 for radical action on cost of living crisis

theguardian.com:

One of Britain’s major retailers has contacted No 10 directly with a plea to prepare an immediate and radical cost of living package, amid warnings that broad help for businesses and direct cash aid will be needed to ease runaway energy costs.

In an interview with the Observer, Richard Walker, the managing director of frozen food retailer Iceland, said he had contacted Downing Street out of concern that the “half-baked response” touted by the potential successors to Boris Johnson would fail to address the scale of people’s needs.

Walker warned that a plan mooted by Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss to cut business rates for small- and medium-sized companies would not meet the size of the challenge.

“This is absolutely urgent,” Walker said. “I’ll happily share our data and findings with [the business department] and with the Treasury. Let’s get a plan up and ready for whoever the next prime minister is, because it really is urgent. Where markets dislocate completely, like they have with the energy markets, it’s time for the government to step in, otherwise what are they for?

“My fear is that they’ll do a half-baked response. I read that Liz Truss is thinking of further rate relief for small businesses. That’s lovely, but it won’t even touch the sides. What they need to understand is [this affects] big business as well as small, because it’s exactly the same trouble we’re in – there’s just more jobs at stake.”

It comes amid a warning that, by April, the proportion of people spending more than a fifth of their net income on energy will increase from 32% to 45.9%. Researchers at York University say that 91% of pensioner couples and 90% of couples with three children will be spending more that 10% of their net income on fuel