The managing director of the supermarket chain Waitrose has attacked his larger rivals for “duping” customers in multimillion-pound price-cutting campaigns.

Mark Price, who took over as head of Waitrose in April, said that competitors such as Tesco and Asda regularly funded cheaper prices on products by pushing up the price of others.

He told The Times: “I’ll make two new year predictions. The first is that all our larger rivals will announce massive price cuts in January.

“The second is that their gross margins will still be higher at the end of the year than at the beginning. Some prices do go down but others go up by more at the same time. Customers are being duped.”

Mr Price said he was concerned that the focus on grabbing headlines with price-cutting campaigns was destroying the concept of real value for money. “Value does not mean cheap,” he said. “Value is a combination of quality and price.”

His comments came three days after Sainsbury’s, Asda and some dairy groups were fined for fixing the price of milk, cheese and butter. The Office of Fair Trading is still investigating Tesco and Wm Morrison. Waitrose was not implicated in the inquiry.

Last week Tesco was accused of inflating the cost of fruit and vegetables then cutting prices and calling it a promotion. Tesco said the price movements reflected product availability.

Mr Price added that food inflation was affecting all grocers, despite Tesco dismissing it as “hype” last week. He said: “Wheat prices have doubled, dairy prices are up 20 to 30 per cent, turkey prices by around 9 per cent. The only way a retailer selling a £1.99 cottage pie can keep the price the same is to make less profit, pay the supplier less or ‘despec’ the product by using cheaper carrots or cheaper cuts of meat.”

Two months ago Mr Price urged the Competition Commission to break the stranglehold that the big four - Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – have on the sector and prevent the UK from becoming “Tescoland”.

According to The Grocer magazine, Asda is the cheapest of Britain’s six main supermarkets on a basket of 33 everyday items, at £39.38. Tesco is third at £41.86, behind Morrisons. Waitrose costs the most at £48.65, but Mr Price said that Waitrose often matched its rivals on staple products.

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