Dark clouds still overhead with cost of food so high

There’s not one of us who will have failed to notice the sharp rise in the cost of food.

The price of everything on our supermarket shelves seems to have jumped – and in many cases not just once – by a good deal more than just a few pennies over the past year or so.

It’s something that affects everyone, of course, yet especially those households struggling to make ends meet as the cost of life’s other essentials also soars at a rate far outstripping any pay rise most are likely to receive.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show food inflation at 19.3 per cent, down only slightly on March’s eye-watering

19.6 per cent and remaining close to the highest rate since the late 1970s.

Those numbers have resulted in UK inflation easing back far less than expected in April and chancellor Jeremy Hunt admitted food prices are ‘still rising too fast’.

Experts say soaring energy costs and supply chain disruption set off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are the main causes, alongside rising labour costs, bad weather affecting harvests and Brexit trade barriers.

But regardless of the reasons, the rate of increase simply must be reined in.

It’s stating the obvious that a climate in which the cost of essentials rising at a rate far higher than wage growth is going to result in hardship.

Over the last few months we’ve heard numerous distressing tales of people struggling to cope and food banks reporting a surge in demand.

On the plus side, Ofgem is set to confirm today that energy prices will fall sharply in July – news that will doubtless be greeted with a huge sigh of relief from one and all.

But with the government’s ability to meet its target of halving inflation by the year’s end shrouded in doubt, the dark clouds show few signs of lifting.