Larger suppliers, including Centrica owned-British Gas, have agreed to take on hundreds of thousands of marooned customers, but expect the cost of doing so to be recouped in a mechanism that Ofgem described as "tried and tested" but which bigger companies say is not...

That's because the new immigration system that came in after Brexit was all about saying to companies: "You can't rely on cheap foreign labour any more, you've got to focus on the workforce in this country, you've got to train them, you've got to pay them better wages."

"The factors pressuring supply chains and inflation include port delays, container shortages, Covid disruptions, shortages on various components, raw materials and ingredients, labour cost pressures and truck and driver shortages," said Costco's chief financial...