Food Industry Competitiveness

I am going to press on, as I want to allow the hon. Gentleman time to elaborate his views later. I do not accept the premise that supermarket businesses are built on screwing suppliers into the ground and on not having a good relationship with their suppliers. To my mind, that would be nonsense. I will say in passing that the idea that we need an ombudsman to improve innovation in the food industry is laughable. We have a hugely innovative industry, so the idea that the ombudsman is essential to promote innovation in the industry is absolutely and utterly ludicrous. The ombudsman is being set up, it seems, on the premise that we have big, horrible and nasty supermarkets screwing their suppliers into the ground on price. The only possible upshot of a successful ombudsman, for those people who want to set it up, is that supermarkets will pay more to their suppliers for their goods. The only consequence of that is that the price to the consumer will go up. I would not mind this so much if we had an honest debate in this House. If people stood up and said, "I believe in a supermarket ombudsman; the likelihood is that it will put prices up by X per cent. but, overall, that will be beneficial to the country as a whole", that would be fine. I might disagree, but at least it would be an honest debate. Instead, we are offered something from cloud cuckoo land—I think Sir Alfred Sherman described that as politicians always offering "painless panaceas", and here we have our latest painless panacea. The painless panacea is this: we can have a supermarket ombudsman, which has the support of all three Front-Bench teams, who looks after suppliers, makes supermarkets pay more money to them, but, crucially, the upshot will be a lower price for the consumer. I do not think that many people would have to study that proposal for very long before they knew that that is patently and utterly ridiculous. If people want supermarkets to pay more to the suppliers, that is a perfectly legitimate point to argue, but at least have the honesty to accept that the only possible outcome is to put up prices to the consumer.