The crisis made headlines in January 2013, when it was revealed that a range of EU food products labelled as beef actually contained undeclared horsemeat, most notably including a Tesco beefburger which turned out to be 29 per cent horse. “That was a baptism of fire. We’d heard that one or maybe two retailers had found problems in their supply chain, and then suddenly it became national news,” she recalls.

Having worked as a retail assistant in a chemist earlier in her career, it was Dickinson’s experience as an auditor at KPMG that she drew on when this scandal broke, she said. Though she has since guided the BRC through Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2022 energy crisis, Dickinson said she has never faced “anything like” the press storm that faced retailers before she had barely got her feet under the desk. Regulation ‘risks getting in the way’ of grocers As industry figures warn of another food inflation crisis, Dickinson worries that government regulation “weighs heavily” on retailers’ ability to pursue growth and secure good value for customers.

Policy and tax make up more of a retail boss’ intray now than in previous years, causing “frustration” among supermarkets and other leading business, Helen Dickinson told City AM. Dickinson said: “[Regulation] weighs heavy on innovation, it weighs heavy on the investment that the industry wants to make. “It risks getting in the way rather than supporting economic growth, supporting customers to navigate the cost of living crisis.

“All of the good things that you want for the economy, and that is the problem that we need to overcome.” For business leaders to be so outspoken about the impact of regulation says a lot Speaking exclusively to City AM at the Retail Tech Show, the industry leader said supermarket bosses are now having to spend more of their time grappling with government policy. Last month, the boss of budget grocer Asda said the government has become “more and more difficult” to deal with over the course of his career in retail. “You wouldn’t have expected somebody like him 10 years ago to be talking about the burden of regulation,” Dickinson said.

“He’s a pragmatic, practical retailer that rolls up their sleeves, builds teams, gets people to really focus on what it is that they need to do to serve customers better. “The word ‘regulation’ or ‘policy’ doesn’t feature in that normally. So for business leaders like that to be so outspoken about the impact of regulation says a lot.” Reeves meets with supermarket bosses Earlier this month, Dickinson – along with the bosses of leading supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morissons – met with Chancellor Rachel Reeves to discuss the risks of food inflation caused by the Iran war.

The BRC and supermarket chiefs handed a “wish list” to the government, detailing the impending regulation which could be slowed to allow retailers to focus on keeping down prices for shoppers. They proposed that the Treasury stalls or unwind regulations around healthy foods and plastic packaging, and offers further energy cost relief packages to manufacturers. The Chancellor met with the BRC and supermarket bosses on April 1 (Getty) “Where the frustration for many across retail comes, is that nobody sits and looks across all of these [regulations] and the cumulative effects of them.

“I think that’s where many retail leaders are saying [that] regulation, in its broadest sense, has become much more of an executive bit of the conversation.” The government is listening to retailers, Dickinson said, but there is “more of a weight of regulation now than there was when I started”. Dickinson said the Treasury has yet to formally respond to retailers’ demands, or propose another meeting, and said the delay in decisionmaking is a source of “a bit of frustration” for top grocers. Food inflation rose to 3.7 per cent in February and some industry figures say price growth could soar to double digits later this year, as energy and supply cost increases caused by the Iran war funnel into the supply chain.

Oasis-style food pricing ‘can’t happen’ The Bank of England stoked fears of a costlier food shop earlier this month when they warned that supermarkets may begin using “dynamic” pricing to rapidly adjust the cost of food to match demand. Supermarkets like the Co-op, Morrisons and Waitrose are rolling out digital shelf labels, and shoppers fear these could be used to introduce so-called “Oasis-style” surge pricing during peak trading hours. But Dickinson said such a thing, if it does hit our shelves, would encourage supermarkets to compete for lower prices, rather than take advantage of sh