The truth about PM and pastygate: he ate a sausage roll And the chief executive has no trouble remembering when he last ate freshly baked hot food as he eats a Greggs product every day. "This morning, I had two breakfast rolls," he said. Every Friday, Mr McMeikan turns up unannounced at a branch to check that the company's exacting standards are being met, and he spends time each year working behind the counters. The company is so loved in the North East that it has been given the freedom of Newcastle, where it has its headquarters. Mr McMeikan likes to talk about the company's "family values." It began in the 1930s, when John Gregg would deliver bread, eggs and yeast to pit villages around Northumberland. "He blew the horn and everyone came out with their plates," said Mr Gregg's son, Ian, who took over the business when his father died. Mr McMeikan, who previously worked at Tesco and Sainsbury's, is only the third chief executive in the company's history. Earlier this month, he announced the creation of 800 jobs in 90 new stores. The Chancellor has now possibly bulldozed through that. The Tories should be aware of the Greggs success story. Last year, the Prime Minister, along with the Prince of Wales, invited Mr McMeikan, who is the Prince's "ambassador" for the North East in recognition for his charity work, to No.10 to lead a delegation of business leaders to look at the issue of child poverty. The bakery boss has set up a series of breakfast clubs for deprived children who cannot afford to eat - a scheme that now feeds 8,000 children nationwide. Mr McMeikan made sure that five new breakfast clubs were set up in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool in response to last year's riots, despite Greggs being targeted heavily by looters. This week, he went to the Treasury to present his argument against the pasty tax, namely that it would create huge complexities that would be almost impossible to implement ("I mean are we," he asked, "supposed to put a thermometer in every pasty we sell?"). It was Nigel Lawson who, when he was chancellor in the eighties, exempted freshly baked goods from VAT on hot food, largely because they tended to cool down. "If you reheat baked food for a customer, then that is hot, or above ambient air temperature, as the Treasury call it," said Mr McMeikan. If you keep baked food in a heated environment, then that is hot. But our savouries cool down and go on to shelves. It is the wrong tax at the wrong time.