John Swinney’s flagship election vow to cap supermarket food prices is in disarray after he watered down his plans following a backlash.
Less than a week after promising to enforce ‘legal price ceilings’ on up to 50 essential items, the First Minister proposed a ‘voluntary agreement’ instead.
He admitted there was a ‘risk of legal challenge’ to his original scheme and ‘voluntary steps’ would be ‘quicker’ than passing a new law.
Retailers warned his new plan would ‘almost certainly fall foul of competition rules on collusion and price fixing’.
Opposition parties said the ‘unravelling’ of the big offer to families showed it was never more than a ‘gimmick’.
Scottish Tory business spokesman Murdo Fraser said: ‘Now that John Swinney can see that his crackpot, back-of-a-fag-packet idea is unravelling, he’s trying to row back on it.
‘It was never a serious attempt to help hard-pressed families, but only an excuse for setting up a fight with the UK government.’
Mr Swinney had said he would use ‘public health powers’ to set a maximum price for essential foods to cut the price of the weekly supermarket shop.
John Swinney's backtracked on his plan to implement price caps on foods after it was labelled a 'gimmick'
Other parties said the real aim was to whip up ‘Nationalist grievance’.
David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, which last week called the cap a ‘potty gimmick’ harking back to ‘1970s-style price controls’, urged talks between retailers and ministers on a ‘more realistic and sensible approach’.
But he warned: ‘We’d be wary of any notion of a voluntary arrangement that would almost certainly fall foul of competition rules on collusion and price fixing which exist to protect shoppers.’
Talking at an election event in Edinburgh, Mr Swinney insisted the plan could happen this year ‘if we got voluntary agreement about that’.
But Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: ‘John Swinney is much more interested in poorly thought-out gimmicks than actually delivering policies that will make a positive difference.’
Reform UK Scotland leader Malcolm Offord said: ‘John Swinney’s 1970s USSR policy is already falling apart.’
Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate Jamie Greene added: ‘John Swinney might have the demeanour of a bank manager but not the skill with maths.’
Earlier, Mr Swinney contrasted his ‘reliable, experienced and trusted leadership’ with the ‘chaos’ of UK Labour.