The executive chairman of supermarket chain Iceland has asked the government to impose a cap on forecourt operators’ profits to stop retailers “exploiting the crisis at the expense of consumers”.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Lord Richard Walker, who was appointed the government’s ‘cost of living champion’ in February, three months after he was made a Lord by Keir Starmer, said: “we hauled petrol retailers and energy producers into Downing Street… to give them a shot across the bows – a warning that opportunistic rip-offs will not be tolerated”.
Lord Walker has “asked the government to consider a temporary profit cap, if required, to stop producers and retailers exploiting the crisis to make windfall profits at the expense of consumers”.
He added that if the Competition and Markets Authority does its job “effectively”, then “sectors that have profited from price-gouging against the most vulnerable in society should consider themselves on notice”.
Lord Walker said that having seen the tills at Iceland he knows “from first-hand experience how hard it is for many families to meet their everyday living costs”.
Baron Walker of Broxton, 45, is the son of Iceland’s founder, Malcom Walker. His family has an estimated net worth of over £200m.
After promoting his column on LinkedIn, Lord Walker was met with criticism from independent forecourt operators. One responded: “There is absolutely no evidence of profiteering in the fuel retail sector. None. Just desperate politicians and now their puppet business “wizkid” who want to move attention away from the government who are collecting additional VAT on fuel sales.”
The retailer added that to “mention the word profiteering in the same sentence as fuel retail is absolutely ridiculous, slanderous and is encouraging untold abuse of our staff members”, and that Lord Walker is “perpetuating a government lie as to how the fuel retail market works whilst pushing customers away from independents to the larger corporates who are primarily owned by private equity”.
