As Parliamentarians return to Holyrood and Westminster this week after summer recess they’ll be greeted by ominous economic updates.

Any meaningful economic growth continues to elude the UK, with the latest quarter seeing only a 0.3% uplift. For Scotland the figure was 0.2%. A year into the new UK Government and a new Scottish First Minister, it appears economic recovery remains some way off.

Further concerning figures from both the Office for National Statistics and the Scottish Retail Consortium show inflation on the rise. Our data shows shop price inflation is at an 18-month high, largely fuelled by food price rises, and this adds to the pressure on Scottish households still grappling with the cost of living.

Some of that rise is beyond government control, for example poor harvests and spikes in global demand for certain products. However, there is no escaping the fact that a chunky portion of the rise in grocery bills is, as the Bank of England acknowledged, is due to the enormous £7 billion in new statutory costs which UK retailers were lumbered with as a direct consequence of last year’s UK Budget.

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