Media Bites 24 February: Buy British, CMA, Just Eat, AI CVs

Hospitals, schools and prisons will be urged to buy more British food, as part of a government push to heal a rift with farmers over changes to inheritance tax, reports The Guardian. Environment secretary Steve Reed, will tell the NFU annual conference on Tuesday the public sector will be set a target to source at least half of all food from farms with the highest welfare standards, which should benefit British growers and food producers, the paper says. Business reporter Joanna Partridge writes that the government can expect a “hostile reception” at the conference.

In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, the new head of the Competition & Markets Authority Doug Gurr says the authority will follow a “minimalist principle: don’t intervene unless you really need to”. However, he did add a message for those believing it a good tie to push edgy deals past a weakened watchdog: “Don’t assume that we’ve suddenly become naive and that a deal that was terrible six months ago is suddenly marvellous. The fundamentals haven’t changed.”

Retailers, suppliers and manufacturers are raising their prices in response to October’s tax-raising budget, stoking fears that inflation may overshoot expectations this year, reported The Times at the weekend. Tom Athron, the chief executive of Fortnum & Mason, told the publication he expected food prices to rise between 4.5% and 5.5% this year. The boss of one big supermarket said they were expecting food inflation to hit 5%.

Just Eat Takeaway is set to be acquired by investment group Prosus in a more than €4bn deal that will lead to the company’s delisting from public markets, reports The Financial Times this morning. The deal would bring “an end to a tumultuous few years for the Amsterdam-based group, whose shares surged during the Covid-19 pandemic but fell sharply as lockdowns ended” it reports.

Parcel locker business InPost is launching its first customer-to-customer delivery service, in a direct challenge to Royal Mail, reported The Times yesterday. The firm, which has 9,200 locker locations in the UK (many of them outside supermarkets and convenience stores), will this week unveil a parcel delivery service that starts at £1.99, undercutting Royal Mail’s lowest price of £3.25.

Supermarkets in Northern Ireland are still experiencing “sustained practical difficulties” with the Windsor Framework (NI’s post-Brexit deal which covers trade and human rights), MPs have been told. The BBC on Sunday reported on a NI Retail Consortium (NIRC) submission to an inquiry which states that during 2024 the percentage of vehicles being physically checked had increased leading to “additional delays and, occasionally, the rejection of lorries impacting on retail operations”.

Ministers are developing AI tools to write CVs and covering letters for jobseekers, to free up Jobcentre staff to work on more complex cases and reduce the UK’s welfare bill, reports The Financial Times.