Steven Swinford
Breaking: Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, suggests that price caps on essential goods in supermarkets are unsustainable 'The question you have to think through is are you doing it for some well grounded, temporary reason? If you start doing it as a matter of course you are artificially moving prices relative to costs. That's not a sustainable thing in the long run. It does need to be thought through' Dr Swati Dhingra, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, says lots of countries have tried price controls but they have not worked. 'The biggest problem is you're dampening the price signal, precisely what you want people to react to. As a market economy you can do that for a little bit but how long can you let it go on? 'I grew up with price controls on food all my life. That story to some degree was very successful in being able to cure famine and poverty. But at the same time it has ended up creating a highly distorted agricultural sector in India. Do it with a lot of caution and a lot of thinking behind what it is trying to target.'