Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith vows to scrap Labour's grocery tax and slash new home prices by £50,000

From the Newshound archive · first published 5 October 2026.

Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith is set to tell the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham that scrapping Labour's Extended Producer Responsibility packaging tax will cut the cost of weekly shopping, with the Bank of England having warned the charge adds 0.5% to food inflation. Griffith will pledge to abolish the £1.6 billion scheme, currently costing shops and manufacturers billions, alongside stripping out construction red tape to reduce the price of a new build home by up to £50,000. He will brand Prime Minister Andy Burnham a leader chasing "a socialist fever dream of the 1970s." The package is billed as "the most ambitious deregulation project in a generation."

The Tories would also scrap the Future Homes Standard, which from next year would require costly heat pumps in new properties.

The British Retail Consortium's Helen Dickinson backed the move, warning producers now face 'three taxes to recycle the same materials to the tune of nearly £3 billion a year.'