Price controls on essential food items: draft legislative provisions
Overview
This consultation seeks your views on the proposed introduction of legal price caps on essential food items. This would include a cap on the price of certain goods sold by large supermarkets chains in their stores or online. We are seeking your views on this proposal, and also on the design of any scheme introduced so that it delivers maximum benefit for people in Scotland.
Read the consultation paper. The consultation paper contains full background information for this consultation. You may find it useful to read or refer to while responding.
Consultation Content
The consultation is divided into 9 chapters, and there will be questions on the material in each chapter.
Chapter 1: sets out more detail about our aims and intentions.
Chapter 2: sets out a proposed model for price caps and alternatives.
Chapter 3: considers which goods could be subject to a cap and how that might be determined.
Chapter 4: deals with which businesses could be obliged to comply with price cap requirements.
Chapter 5: considers how the level of price caps could be set.
Chapter 6: relates to support for primary producers.
Chapter 7: discusses compliance, and potential penalties that could apply in the event of non-compliance.
Chapter 8: deals with issues of monitoring and evaluation.
Chapter 9: seeks views on the future operation of any scheme and wider considerations that may inform ongoing policy development.
Please click 'Begin consultation' at the bottom of this page to proceed.
Useful information about responding to this consultation
As you complete your response, each page will provide the option to 'Save and come back later' at the bottom. This means you can save your progress and return to the consultation at any time before it closes. If you don't use this feature and leave the consultation midway through, your response will be lost.
Once you have submitted your response, you can enter your email address to get a pdf copy of your answers sent to you.
On the 'About You' page at the end of this consultation, organisations will have the opportunity to tell us more about their work and/or how their response was informed.
After the consultation has closed there will be a few months delay before any responses are published. This is because we must check any responses to be published abide by our Terms of Use.
All relevant submitted responses will be analysed. This may be carried out by third party organisations who Scottish Government, its executive agencies or non-ministerial offices, contract to do this work. Such data sharing will be governed by appropriate contractual arrangements to keep your data secure.
Your response will be used by the Scottish Government to inform policy under public task. We may use approved AI tools to support parts of the analysis (for example, grouping similar comments or drafting summaries). Where AI is used, analysts will review and verify outputs against original responses. Personal data are handled in line with data protection law and our privacy notice. Do not include information that identifies you or others unless we specifically ask for it. If you have accessibility needs or would prefer not to have your free‑text responses processed by AI‑assist, contact foodprices@gov.scot and we will provide an alternative.
An analysis report will usually be published some months after the consultation has closed. This report will summarise the findings based on all responses submitted. It will be published on the Scottish Government website and you may be notified about it if you choose to share your email address with us.
You can also join our consultation mailing list where we regularly list newly published analysis reports (as well as new consultations).
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