It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who speaks with great knowledge of and expertise in agriculture, and she knows the contents of the Bill. Her comments about pillar one were particularly well made. The subject has received poor press, but it is absolutely essential to the well-being of many farmers who farm on hill and other remote areas of these islands.
I declare an interest, as I am still responsible for an active farm that sends most of its products to a major supermarket via a slaughterhouse operated by Vion which, as we have heard, announced today that it was going to pull out of the UK. It employs nearly 1,000 people in the constituency next door to mine, and many of the farmers I represent use that facility to market their livestock. I hope that the Minister will take note of that, because it is a particular issue for us.
I commend and congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), on how she moved Second Reading. She did it with enthusiasm and panache. Not only is she able, but she is lucky, too. She was in the right place at the right time to pick up the Bill, which has support across the House and is one we have been waiting for for a very long time. She is not only able and lucky, but standing on the shoulders of giants who have taken the business forward in the past. Mention has already been made of Colin Breed, a former Member of this House, who was the first person to produce a report that put in print what many people believed—that is, that supermarkets, because of the way in which they had grown and now dominated the marketplace, were taking an unfair advantage. That led to the first Competition Commission report on the subject.
This is a failing market. Many of us believe that if markets are working properly they need light regulation, but this is certainly an example of a failing market in which the people making the purchasing decisions are so large and dominant in the market that they can
adversely affect it to the detriment of the small producers. We need regulation, and I believe that the Bill is a fine piece of legislation that will contribute to resolving the problems.
Let me make a few suggestions about what we could consider in Committee when the individual clauses are debated. Mention has already been made of the ability of the adjudicator to implement fines. I certainly support that and would support a debate on the subject in Committee. It seems to me that just because an adjudicator could impose fines, fines would not necessarily be imposed or have to be imposed. The fact that the power was available to the adjudicator would make the job a lot easier and would put pressure on the supermarkets to take every opportunity to ensure that their dealings with their suppliers were fair.
Naming and shaming can have a big effect on supermarkets. I have been told that during the summer, when the dairy industry was in turmoil, the straw that broke the supermarkets’ backs, making them increase the prices they paid to farmers and enter into the voluntary code that a former Agriculture Minister was so instrumental in introducing, was the huge Twitter and Facebook campaign about the supermarkets that were the worst in abusing their suppliers. That was the turning point. Obviously, the farmers were protesting on the streets, but the campaign among consumers made a difference. Naming and shaming has a powerful impact on supermarkets, but the ability to impose a fine would give extra power to the adjudicator.
One question that has been asked is what role the adjudicator would have in the voluntary code that the supermarkets have entered into with their suppliers, which is something that the Minister should consider. I know that a number of people have written to the Department and not received an answer. Are we dealing just with the grocery code or with other codes that have been entered into voluntarily by the producers and the supermarkets?
Food chains are rather complex, and rarely does a farmer supply a supermarket directly. That does happen, but it is not the usual way in which food moves along the chain. Often, there are other people between the producer and the retailer. In the milk industry, farmers supply dairies that either bottle the milk and send it off in liquid form or produce dairy products such as cheese, yoghurt and so on. In the meat industry, the chain will often include slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. There are also other parts of the food chain, such as wholesalers and distributors. The systems are very complex, and I hope that the Bill will ensure that their complexity will be considered by the adjudicator and that the adjudicator will be able to intervene when he thinks the market is failing.
All in all, I believe the Bill addresses many of the problems that small producers have experienced over the past 20 years in dealing with massive purchasing organisations such as supermarkets. The Bill can be improved, and I ask the Minister to consider the ability to impose fines as well as whether the adjudicator will have a role to play in any codes that are entered into voluntarily between producers and supermarkets.
8.26 pm