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While higher taxes and minimum wage bills have hit supermarkets, food inflation has surged in part due to poor harvests globally, with disease and droughts affecting yields. Escalating trade tensions also have an impact.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, which represents the UK’s major supermarkets, said retailers were “doing everything possible to keep food prices affordable”.

“But it’s an uphill battle,” she claimed, “with over £7bn in additional costs in 2025 alone,” citing higher taxes.

The boss of Tesco, Ken Murphy, has previously said that “enough is enough” on business taxes.

The UK’s largest supermarket said the higher National Insurance rate had cost it £235m this year, however, Tesco has upgraded its earnings outlook for the year, with expectations of full-year profits of between £2.9bn and £3.1bn.

Lidl revealed this week that its profits had surged threefold. Sales jumped by 7.9% as pre-tax profits hit £156.8m in the year to 28 February, up from £43.6m a year earlier.

The chancellor has previously said she is planning “targeted action to deal with cost of living challenges” in her budget, though on Friday she refused to rule out raising income tax, amid speculation she is considering breaking a key Labour election pledge.

Supermarket bosses highlighted that part of the government’s business rates reforms posed a problem for the industry, in particular the so-called business rates surtax, which is being levied on all large commercial premises.

Business rates are a tax on non-domestic properties such as shops, pubs and offices.

In last year’s Budget, the government announced its intention to introduce two lower figures used to calculate such rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties with rateable values below £500,000.

Meanwhile, firms with properties with rateable values at and above £500,000 will pay a higher amount, which the government says will include the majority of large distribution warehouses, such as those used by online retail giants Amazon.

It is expected that the chancellor will confirm the rates businesses will have to pay at next month’s Budget, along with further details, which will come into force in April 2026.

But the UK’s supermarkets have argued large retail premises were a “tiny proportion of all stores, yet account for a third of retail’s total business rates”.

They urged the chancellor to “ensure that the proposed changes to business rates result in a significant reduction to the industry’s rates burden”.

“The chancellor has rightly made tackling inflation her top priority, and with food inflation stubbornly high, ensuring retail’s rates burden doesn’t rise further would be one of the simplest ways to help,” said Ms Dickinson.

The Treasury said that business rates would be adjusted to reflect changes in the overall value of the tax base, “so that the system continues to raise the same amount of revenue in real terms”.

“If the total value of rateable properties increases, the tax rate will generally fall,” it added. “This means that even if a specific property’s RV goes up, its bill could still decrease if the reduction in the tax rate is large enough to offset the increase in value.

“Ultimately, what businesses pay after a revaluation depends on both the new RVs and the adjusted tax rate.”

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Operators are exposed to equal amounts of radiation during coronary procedures whether they use left distal radial access (DRA) or right transradial access (TRA), according to new data from the randomized, multicenter DOSE trial.

Yongcheol Kim, MD, PhD (Yongin Severance Hospital, Republic of Korea), who presented the data during the TCT WorldLink Forum today, said left DRA “has recently emerged as an alternative access site” that, among other things, offers operators less physical discomfort. It also involves less subclavian tortuosity plus catheter techniques that are more akin to the transfemoral approach.

Unfortunately, as in the group’s previous DRAMI trial comparing access routes in STEMI patients, the hoped-for radiation benefits with left DRA did not pan out.

James Goldstein, MD (Millennium Cardiology, Royal Oak, MI), the discussant following Kim’s presentation, summed up the data by saying: “I love it when trials make sense.” In DOSE, “the manner in which the left and right wrists were ultimately positioned [was] pretty much the same spot on the groin, so there’s no a priori reason to think there would be much difference in radiation exposure based on the position and the access,” he commented.

Led by Oh-Hyun Lee, MD, and Ji Woong Roh, MD, PhD (both from Yongin Severance Hospital), the study, which was simultaneously published in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, is the first large, randomized trial to evaluate the potential for left DRA to limit how much radiation operators receive during these procedures. 

Prior studies had suggested that “operators using the left TRA tend to experience less radiation exposure than those using the right TRA,” according to Kim.

“Coronary angiography and PCI are essential procedures in the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease, often performed thousands of times over an interventional cardiologist’s career,” the researchers note in their paper, adding that the radiation exposure to operators that accompanies such cases can, over a lifetime, pose substantial health risks.

The DOSE Trial

The DOSE investigators randomized 1,010 patients scheduled to undergo coronary procedures by either left DRA or right TRA at three centers in the Republic of Korea. They used a set of three real-time dosimeters to measure radiation exposure for five experienced operators at the left wrist, as well as at the left side of the head outside the lead cap and the left chest pocket of the lead vest. All wore the same radiation protection gear, including lead skirt and vests, thyroid collars, leaded glasses, leaded caps, and shields mounted on the table and ceiling.

With left DRA, patients’ left hands were positioned in the same place as where the left femoral artery puncture site would be, whereas with right TRA, patients’ right arms were positioned close to the right side of their bodies.

The left DRA group had a lower proportion of male patients and was more likely to undergo ultrasound-guided puncture. PCI, done in a quarter of the participants, trended higher with left DRA but didn’t reach statistical significance. All other baseline characteristics were similar in the two groups.

However, radiation levels were similar at each location no matter which access route was used.

Median Radiation Exposure (μSv) to Operators by Access Route

There were no advantages to either approach for the secondary endpoints of access-site crossover, fluoroscopy time, procedure time, and contrast volume, and no differences across patient subgroups.

Overall, though, the study reassures “that radiation hazard should not be considered a limiting factor for the adoption of left DRA in routine clinical practice,” the researchers conclude.

Goldstein added that both access routes were “successful, with equivalent levels of procedural performance,” however.

Going forward, as radiation protective gear grows more sophisticated and more widely used, these issues may have less relevance, he suggested. The benefits of the newer products go beyond lower exposure to radiation. Also important, Goldstein said, is “getting the lead off and avoiding the orthopedic complications” associated with traditional protective clothing.