‘Buy value brands’ Eustice out of touch

WITH regard to the comments made by George Eustice, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, advising struggling shoppers to buy value brands.

He might have more authority if he had been following the work of food and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, who has been the champion of the poor for many years. She has written cook books and related her experiences as a struggling single mother who made it her business to find ways of feeding her family on the tiniest of budgets. The current problem is that those who have been buying value brands for years have even less money now, so maybe it is not the panacea Mr Eustice suggests.

In March 2022, Jack Monroe told the Work and Pensions Select Committee that there is a reduced availability of value product lines and a £20 food shop now bought about two-thirds the amount of goods it did a few years ago.

And as everything else becomes more expensive, buying food becomes more and more problematic. Latest figures show shop prices are up 2.7% on last year, the highest rate of inflation for more than 10 years. Food inflation accelerated to 3.5% in April, up from 3.3% in March, according to the BRC-NielsenIQ Shop Price Index.

I only have to visit my local Co-op to notice substantial price rises, not just a few pence here and there.

Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis is ‘completely out of ideas’ in advising how low income families can weather the current storm. In March, he told BBC’s Sunday Morning: “We’re going to have about 10 million people in fuel poverty.”

So it feels somewhat distasteful for an MP, who claimed £200,000 in expenses last year, should pronounce on how the poorest in society should behave. I hope his intentions were pure but he is completely out of touch.

Catherine Pickles Buckfastleigh, Devon