Attention all shoppers! This everyday item may soon put up the cost of your weekly shop…

The combination of employment and packaging taxes, as well as climate change, is proving costly for Britain’s supermarket customers, warns James Moore

For the sixth month in a row, food prices have risen in the UK with the latest figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) revealing the worst hit items are basics such as eggs, meat, cheese and milk.

Another casualty of food inflation, according to this month’s data, is the humble cuppa – with teabags seeing a sharp increase of 4 per cent this month, up from 3.7 per cent in June. These increases are cumulative. Even if food price inflation falls – and there is precious little sign of that – prices will still rise.

The BRC’s number isn’t quite as bad as that produced by WorldPanel, formerly Kantar, which recorded a 5.2 per cent rise during July. But that’s just comparing “bad” with “worse”.

Even so, the fact remains that it’s everyday essentials and shopping staples that are going up in price – something we should all be worried about.

Food price inflation hits those on low incomes hardest. True, tea isn’t something you need in order to live. But come on: if even tea is being pushed into the luxury category there’s clearly a larger issue at play.

So, what’s to blame? As ever, it’s down to a combination of factors. Food inflation has risen across the board because of the extra costs loaded onto supermarkets by, you guessed it, the government – including Rachel Reeves’s decision to increase employer national insurance contributions (NICs) while lowering the threshold at which the levy kicks in.

This has hit grocers particularly hard because of the high number of relatively low-waged staff they employ. The chancellor promised not to tax “working people”, but these figures clearly demonstrate that she has done exactly that.

Other regulations have further tightened the screw. Grocers have been chafing at the “extended producer responsibility scheme” – better known as the packaging tax. April created a cliff edge, with these changes hitting at the same time as a higher minimum wage, which further hiked labour costs.

The supermarkets all pay above the minimum and boosted pay rates to keep them above the floor. And don’t forget Brexit, which increased the cost of importing food from the EU. (Some of this is on the previous government, of course.)

Combined, these measures injected a super-concentrated shot of adrenaline into food prices, exacerbated by the fact that supermarket suppliers had to grapple with the same higher NICs and wage pressures.

Some individual food items, however, face specific pressures on top of all that – including tea. Although it might come from abroad, it isn’t entirely immune from higher UK labour costs. Yorkshire Tea, for example, is packaged in Harrogate.

However, that pales by comparison to the impact of climate change, which hits producers’ yields. Like many agricultural crops, tea has rather specific requirements when it comes to temperature, rainfall, humidity and so on. Climate change is leading to more erratic weather conditions – thus lowering production.

Add in geopolitical instability – the war in Ukraine, Houthi attacks on shipping, etc – and you can see why the price of your daily cuppa is leaving an unusually bitter taste.

The UK-India trade deal should help. But the benefits from lower tariffs are nowhere near enough to stop the kettle boiling.

Meat prices have surged as a result of a combination of increased consumption, both globally and locally, and reduced production. Eric Lyons, a Solihull-based butchers, explains in a blog post that UK beef consumption is forecast to increase by 1 per cent while production is set to decline by 5 per cent.

“This is further expedited through the closure of farms. Last year, around 30 farms in Scotland shut down, significantly reducing local production and adding to the supply shortage,” the company said.

Avian flu, meanwhile, has cut the number of chickens available for slaughter. Butter has been affected by reduced dairy production at a time of high demand and all the other nasties.

This helps to explain why hopes that a supermarket price war – which looked to be breaking out a few months back – would put a lid on food price inflation have all but evaporated.

Faced with rising consumer discontent, and more and more anguished consumers filling up MPs’ inboxes, we can expect politicians to seek scapegoats.

This happened the last time food price inflation spiked a couple of years back (when it was even worse). There was a great deal of chuntering among MPs about the grocery sector and the Competition & Markets Authority was drafted in. Here’s what it concluded: "Overall, we didn't find widespread evidence of weak competition: profit margins were historically low; consumers were switching to get the best deals; and the lowest-price retailers were gaining market share from others.”

So that one isn’t going to fly. If the government wants to reduce the burden on “working people” – the hardest hit – at a time when so many pressures are pushing prices up, here's what it should do: reverse the increase in national insurance, scrap the reduced threshold at which it kicks in, repeal the packaging tax, and consider rejoining the European single market.

Yes, yes. I know. Those are fantasies. So prices look set to remain elevated. The best we can hope for is for the government not to dream up anything that makes it worse (such as threatening to fine supermarkets for failing to sell enough healthy food to help tackle obesity.)

Ministers should think very carefully about such apparently high-minded ideas that come with an expensive sting in the tail. But I’m not holding my breath. Are you?