Call for food price caps ‘completely preposterous’, says M&S boss
The CEO of Marks & Spencer criticized a government proposal for voluntary price caps on essential food items, calling it 'completely preposterous.' He argued that the government should instead focus on reducing taxes and regulatory burdens to support supermarkets. M&S has faced significant financial challenges, including losses on basic items and increased costs due to new regulations and global conflicts.
- ▪Stuart Machin, the CEO of M&S, stated that the government should not interfere in business operations.
- ▪M&S has lost money on basic items like milk and bread and has slim profits on eggs and sugar.
- ▪The retailer is facing increased taxation and regulatory burdens, which are impacting its ability to grow and invest.
3 outlets in our directory ran this story. Coverage spans 2 points on the political spectrum — 1 lean left, 1 centre.
- ▪ Supermarket bosses say food price caps would be ‘preposterous’ and ‘idiotic’ — The Independent
- ▪ M&S boss slams ‘preposterous’ proposal to cap food prices — Financial Times — World
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| Original publisher | World news | The Guardian |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/20/call-for-food-price-caps-completely-preposterous-says-m-and-s-boss |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 10:00:25 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T10:20:02.298Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T11:08:54.447Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | eXnxOFlQzdvp · 3 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
M&S says it has already lost money on some basic items such as milk, bread and baked beans and made very slim profits on products such as eggs and sugar. Photograph: David Willis/AlamyView image in fullscreenM&S says it has already lost money on some basic items such as milk, bread and baked beans and made very slim profits on products such as eggs and sugar. Photograph: David Willis/AlamyMarks & SpencerCall for food price caps ‘completely preposterous’, says M&S bossStuart Machin argues government should reduce tax and regulatory burden on supermarkets insteadSarah ButlerWed 20 May 2026 06.00 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleThe boss of Marks & Spencer has called a government proposal for voluntary price caps on essential food items “completely preposterous”, saying it should reduce…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at World news | The Guardian.
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