MPs banging the ‘greedy grocers’ drum is too easy, but it won’t help the very poor

Whenever economic times are hard and getting worse there’s an attempt by watchdogs, under pressure from MPs, to prove that supermarkets are profiteering.

This time around, heartbreaking stories of children taking empty lunch boxes to school and kidding classmates they ate the food earlier have increased the pressure.

Those stories are awful, shaming, even. But I don’t think we can say they are the fault of Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

That’s a wider, even more depressing issue to do with poverty in parts of the country, not profiteering.

The news today that Sainsbury is on track for profits this year of perhaps £700 million will only encourage MPs to carry on with their greedflation narrative.

In truth, whenever the grocery sector has been seriously investigated, the results come back the same: it’s a competitive industry with low profit margins that gives the UK some of the cheapest food anywhere.

The biggest strike against the grocers remains the gap between the pay of workers on the shop floor — about £11 an hour — and the millions going to the top brass.

The disparity is hard to justify. One way to close the gap would be to charge more for food so staff could be better rewarded.

Making unhealthy food more expensive might also help the NHS with an obesity crisis that gets worse year by year.

That’s a deeply unpopular position, so no one with designs on winning an election can say it aloud. The easier route is to keep bashing the supermarkets.

So expect more of that and nothing much that might help feed the very poor.