It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice). As his contribution shows, we have a cross-party and cross-House consensus on this matter, and we should take it forward.
Amendment 28 provides that when the adjudicator publishes guidance, she must include guidance about which law applies to arbitration and where the arbitration should be conducted. That is particularly important where there are suppliers from remote parts of the United Kingdom. Article 11 of the Groceries (Supply Chain Practices) Market Investigation Order 2009—that rolls off the tongue—provides for a dispute resolution scheme. The scheme provides for the application of certain arbitration rules, with London as the default location for any arbitration. Clauses 12(5) and 12(6) of the Bill make provision for the amendment of the scheme and the application of the Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010 to arbitrations carried out by the adjudicator. However, it will be important for suppliers and retailers alike to be given statutory guidance on the law applicable to arbitrations and the choice of location for arbitration. Our amendment would require the adjudicator to issue such guidance.
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Amendments 30 and 33 would require the adjudicator to give consideration to large retailer subsidiaries and supply chain intermediaries when making recommendations to the Office of Fair Trading. Amendment 33 appears to duplicate amendment 30, but if the provision goes into the Bill twice, I am sure the message will go out about what we are trying to achieve. However, we will not press amendment 33 to a Division, given that it is a duplicate.
Our amendments aim to deal with the issue that the code does not cover some areas in the supply chain where abuses occur. I shall provide two such examples: company subsidiaries—Asda, for example, has a subsidiary called International Procurement and Logistics Ltd that sources 100% of its product requirements; and intermediaries in the supply chains, which, in some cases, are larger than the retailers themselves. That touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that the whole point of the groceries code and the adjudicator is to try to even the balance of power in the two relationships and that often the balance can lie on the other side. I am disappointed that the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) did not press his amendments in Committee, as the adjudicator would then have been able to operate in both spheres and the large supermarket would have been able to take to the adjudicator issues concerning multinational companies that had been brought to its attention.
Clearly, the adjudicator’s role is to address and remedy any abusive purchasing practices perpetrated by the “buyers” defined in the groceries supply code of practice—GSCOP—who will include a significant number of overseas suppliers. Their role in supplying the UK market with food is vital in terms of addressing the adverse effect on competition identified by the Competition Commission in 2008. It said that there was evidence that excessive risks were being passed on to suppliers, an issue that has been mentioned by hon. Members from both sides of the House. We are concerned at the increase in the number of retailers setting up sourcing offices in a number of countries. For example, Asda set up International Produce Ltd—recently renamed International Procurement and Logistics Ltd—to undertake the buying of what will go on to Asda’s shelves. Therefore, there is a strong case for the Bill to include such organisations, which make the key resourcing decisions—for example, on price, volume, specification and the payment process—on the products that end up on the shelves of the 10 retailers.
We must remember that there is a strong international perspective to this issue. ActionAid and Traidcraft have been active and strong supporters of not only the Bill, but its strengthening in this regard. They were seeking a resolution to ensure that retailers trade fairly with overseas producers well before the code was envisaged or indeed delivered. UK supermarkets buy a significant volume of their products from overseas and produce a considerable —[Interruption.]