Food Industry Competitiveness

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue, I will come to the details in a moment. I want to address those issues as well. At the moment, I am merely setting the scene. Supermarkets sell the products that people want to buy at prices that they want to pay. That is why they have become so successful. No supermarket starts out as a huge multinational company. All businesses start out as small businesses, as did all the supermarkets. They became big businesses by looking after their customers and their employees and, to a large extent, by looking after their suppliers. One element that seems to have been conveniently forgotten in this debate is that supermarkets sell products, and that those products come from suppliers. If the supermarkets did not look after their suppliers and build up a good relationship with them, they would end up with nothing but fresh air on their shelves. They would have no business without suppliers. In the real world of retail, things can go wrong. A supplier could have a problem, perhaps as a result of a health scare, or of foreign objects being found in their products. Supermarkets desperately need to have a good relationship with their suppliers at such times, so that they can go to another supplier and say, "We've got a problem at that factory. Can you increase overnight the amount you can supply to us, because we're in a bit of a pickle?" If supermarkets did not give a stuff about their suppliers, and if all they were interested in was screwing every single one of them into the ground as much as possible, they would never be able to rely on that kind of good will. Anyone here who thinks that supermarkets can not only survive but thrive without building up good, close relationships with their suppliers is completely misguided, and miles off the case. That is a ludicrous thought.