British Agriculture and Food Labelling

I agree that fairness is extremely important, and that is why the Competition Commissioner's recommendations are so important. They address what is a clearly defined imbalance of power between the retailers at one end of the food supply chain and the producers at the other. That returns us to a point made earlier about the need to ensure the security of the whole food supply chain. Although we are focusing on labelling tonight, I consider it incumbent on me to examine all the other factors in detail. We need a programme of action to deal with those factors as quickly as possible, so that we need not wait for movement on the European Union's part and can do what we can within the United Kingdom first.