Your commercial news round-up: Boris Johnson, prison, shoplifting, menstruation, Mars bars

Reading time: five minutes 

We’re rounding up the week, and oh have we got news for you! From Boris Johnson’s allies shaking up the Conservative Party to overcrowded prisons and Mars trying to save the planet one chocolate wrapper at a time, we’ve got your commercial awareness covered.  

• First up, we’ve got an update on the latest trouble in Downing Street. Nadine Dorries, Nigel Adams and Alok Sharma, allies of Boris Johnson, have threatened to trigger by-elections in their constituencies. The move comes after civil servants sent extracts of the former prime minister’s official diary to the police, alleging that they demonstrate Johnson’s breaking of covid rules. Speaking to The Telegraph, one of Johnson’s allies expressed concern over the possibility that the government may have decided “to report Boris to the police for entirely lawful activity just for political purposes”, while another described the situation as the “final straw”.  
  
  All three allies are expected to step down from their roles as MPs and take up peerages in the House of Commons, which they were granted in Johnson’s resignation honours list. It was originally expected that they’d step down before the next general election. However, it’s now been suggested that this could happen sooner – a move that’ll trigger by-elections and threaten the Conservative Party’s seats in these constituencies. The party is currently 16 percentage points behind Labour in the polls, meaning in the run-up to the next election every seat counts.  
   
• The Prison Governor’s Association (PGA) president Andrea Albutt has threatened UK ministers with legal action if they fail to commit to bringing down prison numbers. Jail chiefs have warned that UK prisons are set to reach their capacity limit in just five weeks and have accused ministers of taking prisons in a “catastrophic direction”. Recent figures revealed that there are just 786 available prison cells remaining in England and Wales.  
  
  Albutt stated that the prison population, which stood at approximately 45,000 in the 1970s, is set to reach 100,000 by 2030. The PGA president also noted that housing a prisoner costs on average £46,000 a year, commenting: “The public needs to be educated and moved from this belief that locking up more people and for longer increases public safety.” Albutt has asked ministers “to commit to an early release scheme”, adding “when we’re full, we’re full”. The shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, echoed Albutt’s frustration: “After 13 years, the Conservatives have lost control of our prisons,” a point which is evidenced by assaults on prison staff having rocketed by 142% in the last 10 years. The PGA has now called on the government to make a firm commitment to reducing the prison population and funding the prison system, arguing that this would allow them to “truly rehabilitate people in our care and make our communities safer”. 
   
•  Sticking with crime, supermarkets are reducing the number of items they place on shelves to prevent shoplifting. Retailers such as the Co-op and M&S have noticed an increasing number of shoplifters in stores amid the cost-of-living crisis, spurring them to limit the number of high-value items placed on display, such as steaks or coffee jars. Co-op has taken shoplifting preventative moves one step further and decided to place dummy products in stores fitted with labels stating shoppers should “ask a member of staff” for the real item.  
  
  One disgruntled shopper took to Twitter to express their discontent, describing their local Co-op as “a grocery showroom”, adding that there were persistent in-store announcements that the “cameras are watching you”. The Co-op has defended this move as an effort to protect the safety of workers. The retailer also added that dummy products had only been introduced in a small number of stores. According to the British Retail Consortium, between 2020 and 2021 shoplifting cost retailers £663 million, but with food inflation hitting its 45-year high in 2022, it’s no wonder shoplifting surged by 16% in the final three months of the year.  
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• The British Standards Institute (BSI) revealed new guidance for menstruation and menopause support in the workplace this week. The announcement was spurred by research from the Fawcett Society which revealed around 10% of individuals experiencing menopause leave the workplace due to its symptoms. This figure reaches as high as 25% for those who experience more severe symptoms. The BSI has recommended that companies consider whether there’s a general awareness of the symptoms of menopause and menstruation in the workplace, which include: 
  • hot flushes; 
  • dizziness; 
  • insomnia; and 
  • muscle and joint stiffness.   

It also recommends managers and HR staff undergo specific training in this area. The new workplace standard was developed alongside several organisations including Morrisons, BT, Unison, the LGBT Foundation and Endometriosis UK and is free to all companies regardless of size or sector.  

• If you head into your local Tesco in the coming weeks, you may notice that Mars bars have ditched their plastic wrappers for an eco-friendly paper alternative. The confectionery giant is trialling recyclable paper packaging for a limited time as it explores “different types of alternative packaging solutions”. The company’s investing hundreds of millions of pounds to meet its goal of reducing its use of virgin plastics. Andrew Flood, packaging and development manager at Tesco, said that Mars’ trial also aligned with Tesco’s commitment to developing more eco-friendly packaging, adding that its plastic strategy was “reducing it where we can’t [replace it], reusing more, and recycling what’s left”. 

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