Britain is “headed for recession”, reports The Telegraph this morning as employers slash jobs and Chancellor Rachel Reeves plots spending cuts. Major thinktank The Resolution Foundation warns that Reeves is set to “break her own fiscal rules, having put Britain on course for a £4.4bn budget deficit.
The number of people in working is now falling at a pace consistent with an economic contraction, the report adds. Reeves is expected to cut spending on benefits in an attempt to balance the books in next week’s spring statement.
It comes as a survey of business leaders by Boston Consulting Group indicates that recession fears are increasing, with 57% of executives now regarding it as likely this year, up from 50% in a previous poll.
The decline of working from home means the old-fashioned weekly shop has returned, according to Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts.
“People are back in the office much more, so people are short of time again … and that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing this resurgence [in] the big weekly trolley shop,” Roberts says in an interview with The Sunday Times.
Roberts adds he is not concerned over the prospects of a supermarket price war, after Asda’s chairman Allan Leighton vowed the chain would invest heavily to drive down prices and recapture market share.
Read The Grocer’s coverage on Asda’s struggles, and a plan to axe 6,000 SKUs in a bid to turn around the business, here.
The Sunday Times also reports that ex-Morrisons boss David Potts is understood to have been in discussions with discount retailer B&M “for weeks” about filling its vacancy for chief executive.
Potts is said to have been “eager” to return to front-line retailing, having spent months formulating failed plans for a takeover of The Range earlier this year.
Rachel Reeves is also set to change the law to restrict merger investigations by the UK competition watchdog, as part of her bid to boost corporate confidence and economic growth by easing business regulation, the Financial Times reports.
Reeves plans to update the two main tests that determine whether the Competition and Markets Authority should probe a merger. One test, known as “share of supply”, allows the CMA to investigate deals that would result in a company controlling 25 per cent of the supply of goods and services in a market.
The second “material influence” test can give the antitrust regulator power over purchases of certain interests in a business, such as significant shareholdings, even if they fall short of total control.
The Chancellor – who is due to meet regulators into Downing Street on Monday and unveil a “radical action plan” to cut red tape and help grow the economy – wants to rein in the CMA’s remit following complaints by business that it is too interventionist and stifling Britain’s attractiveness to investors.
The Times reported on Saturday how farmers had been blindsided by the government’s closer of its Sustainable Farming Incentive last week – with Cambridgeshire farmer Mike Fray stating he will need to “ditch his nature-friendly plans, which included wild bird seed mixtures and wildflower meadows, and plant a cash crop instead”.
Arla’s UK boss Bas Padberg tells The Sunday Telegraph the dairy co-op would “never, ever jeopardise anything that was related to quality and we would never put our food at risk”, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph where he discusses the fallout from the Bovaer controversy – where online conspiracy theorists, including suspended Reform MP Rupert Lowe, called for the business to be shunned over its use of the methane-inhibiting animal feed additive.
The US’s avian flu crisis – which has caused egg supply shortages and soaring inflation – means the humble egg is now being smuggled from Mexico, reports The Times – with black market seizures at ports of entry up by an average of 36% between October and February. The most action was in San Diego, with an increase of 158%.
This adds to a spate of recent egg-related crime, including a heist of 100,000 eggs — currently valued at about $50,000 — from a truck in Pennsylvania and a robbery at the Luna Park café in Seattle, whose owner found a group of thieves making off with his egg supply.
The Times this morning reports on how FMCG giant Unilever has recruited an “influencer army” – who either don’t engage with traditional advertising or are deeply sceptical of claims made on it – to sell its products.
The Telegraph questions whether oat milk “might not be as healthy as you think”.
Finally, The Guardian’s George Monbiot says he has started stockpiling food amid fears a Trump-influenced trade war could lead to food shortages, and is calling on government to do the same.
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