UofG Centre for Public Policy

21 April 2026: Professor Nicola McEwen examines the proposed essential food price cap in the SNP manifesto. She explains the 'roadblocks' this policy might face and especially whether it would be compatible with the UK Internal Market Act.

One of the most eye-catching pledges in the SNP manifesto is a plan to impose statutory price ceilings on a basket of essential food items.

Defended as a public health intervention to ensure ‘necessities for a balanced diet remain affordable’, the scheme would require large supermarkets to cap the price of at least one item from 20-50 categories of identified essentials. No further detail has been provided to indicate the items’ list, their nutritional standards, or whether the cap would reduce the price or stop prices rising further.

Although new to Scotland, similar schemes have been introduced in other European countries. The Croatian government, for example, introduced caps on 30 essential food and hygiene products in 2023, rising to 70 by early 2025 and 100 by November 2025, to help make essential products more affordable in the face of above average inflationary pressures. The French government negotiated a time-limited deal with producers and distributors in 2023 that capped the price of around 5,000 products.    

But the SNP pledge has been widely criticised, not least by those questioning whether the Scottish Parliament has the constitutional authority to enact the proposed legislation or whether it would be “blocked” by the UK Government as an infringement of the United Kingdom Internal Market (UKIM) Act (2020).

So, what are the roadblocks that may line the path from a manifesto idea to a policy programme that can be delivered?

First, policy teams within the Scottish Government would have to develop the idea into a workable proposal, consulting with key stakeholders and identifying the statutory requirements around pricing, nutritional value, and any other requirements. The Lord Advocate - the Scottish Government’s principal legal adviser - would have to be confident that the draft legislation was within devolved competence and did not stray into reserved policy areas, such as consumer protection. It would then be up to the Scottish Parliament to scrutinise and vote on the Bill.

Internal market considerations would run alongside that process.

The UKIM Act was designed to ensure that business can trade freely across the UK’s internal borders, enshrining two ‘market access principles’:

• the principle of mutual recognition guarantees that goods and services that meet regulatory requirements in one part of the UK (regarding, for example, their quality, composition, production, packaging, or labelling, etc) can be traded freely in other parts of the UK (or, at least, GB), without having to comply with divergent rules and regulations that are a consequence of devolution.
• the principle of non-discrimination ensures fair and equal treatment for goods, whether they are produced locally or come from another part of the UK. This includes both direct and indirect discrimination. The latter may be where local regulations have an adverse market effect on incoming goods by putting them at a competitive disadvantage compared to local goods.

Statutory requirements on the “manner of sale” of a good - which would include the price at which it must be sold - are not subject to mutual recognition but are protected by the non-discrimination principle. Indirect discrimination can be justified in some cases where it can “reasonably be considered a necessary means of achieving a legitimate aim”, defined as: (i) the protection of the life or health of humans, animals or plants; and/or (ii) the protection of public safety or security.

So, where does this leave the proposed price caps?

The UKIM Act does not prevent the Scottish Parliament or any other legislature from determining regulations within their spheres of competence. But it could prevent incoming goods and services being subject to those regulations.

The UK Government cannot therefore “block” price caps on UKIM Act grounds. It could refer the legislation to the Supreme Court if it felt it strayed into reserved matters, but that is different from the roadblocks resulting from the UKIM Act.

But any affected party from one part of the UK trading goods or services in another part can challenge laws on UKIM Act grounds where they believe their market access is restricted. The First Minister’s defence of price caps as a public health intervention may be an attempt to frame them as ‘a necessary means of achieving a legitimate aim’, in this case, the protection of human health. But the health benefits of price caps would depend on the detail of the policy and seem more tenuous than was the case with minimum unit pricing of alcohol. In Scotland, as elsewhere, the objective of price caps is first and foremost about affordability; making essential products more affordable; health benefits may be a secondary consequence, but would they be a necessary means of achieving those benefits? Or could those benefits be achieved through other means that don’t lead to adverse market effects?

A safer bet, then, would be to secure an exclusion from UKIM’s market access principles by negotiating a ‘Common Framework Agreement’ to this effect with intergovernmental partners. And here’s the rub. In the previous parliamentary session, several pieces of Scottish Parliament legislation (most notably the Deposit and Return scheme regulations and restrictions on trade in rodent glue traps (e.g. for pest control)) ran aground when confronted by the UKIM Act and the unwillingness of the previous UK Government to permit exclusions from the Act’s ‘market access principles’.

The Labour Government later granted an exclusion for glue traps and underlined its commitment to managing the UK internal market via Common Frameworks. Its review left the UKIM Act intact but gave a commitment to broadening the factors to be assessed by the governments in their considerations of proposed exclusions to include public health impact/benefits, as well as environmental protection impacts/benefits, alongside direct and indirect economic impacts.

In the case of price caps, the onus would be on the Scottish Government as the proposing administration to demonstrate the health benefits. Whether by design, or otherwise, an exclusion request for price caps would test the limits of the Labour Government’s new approach to managing the internal market through intergovernmental cooperation.

From idea to implementation, then, would be a resource-intensive, lengthy process with an uncertain outcome, raising questions about whether there may be more immediate and certain policy responses to the cost-of-living crisis.

Author

Nicola McEwen is a Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Glasgow and Director of the Centre for Public Policy. Nicola has published widely in the field of devolution, nationalism and multi-level government, including on how the UK Internal Market Act affects devolution.

Read Professor Nicola McEwen's recent co-authored report, Westminster Rules? United Kingdom Internal Market Act and Devolution.

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First published: 21 April 2026