No, but I think that it is very important to listen to Parliament, as I have outlined. Indeed, I think that was the point that some of my hon. Friend’s colleagues made earlier.
A code without an adjudicator is, to borrow an analogy from my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), like a sports match with a rule book but no referee. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) described the climate of fear, which can mean that suppliers are unwilling to come forward, and that is why the independent adjudicator is necessary.
New clauses 1, 2, 4 and 5, which were tabled by a combination of the hon. Members for Shipley, for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), would all restrict the operation of the adjudicator so that it would be less extensive than the coverage provided by the code, either by excluding suppliers above a certain turnover or excluding supplies from outside the EU. I do not think that in principle that is a sensible approach to take. As I have said, the groceries code was put in place by the Competition Commission, after a detailed and thorough investigation, to rectify certain features of the groceries market that were causing long-term detriment to consumers. The adjudicator’s prime purpose is to enforce the code, so it is sensible and coherent that they and the code should have the same coverage.
With regard to the suggestion in new clause 2 that suppliers with a large turnover should be excluded, it is important to point out that the Competition Commission and the Select Committee explicitly considered that and concluded that excluding certain suppliers would not be appropriate. The Committee stated in its report that such an approach “would be impractical” and that because GSCOP applies to suppliers of all sizes, so should its monitoring enforcement. The Committee stated that the adjudicator is the gateway to the dispute resolution procedure, so with no access to the adjudicator large suppliers would have only the courts for redress, not the arbitration process, which is also very helpful. If the evidence from large suppliers on whether retailers are complying cannot be taken into account, smaller suppliers—this point was made earlier by other hon. Members—might also lose out because the evidence might be crucial to the case. According to the Select Committee, large suppliers might be better able to bring widespread potential breaches to the adjudicator’s attention than small suppliers. For all those reasons, it is important that the scope of the adjudicator fits that of the code.
We had many discussions on whether we should restrict who can complain. In Committee and in the earlier pre-legislative scrutiny those discussions centred on whether trade associations should be allowed to complain. We have decided to allow evidence from any source whatever. Ruling out evidence from particular sources would weaken the adjudicator, which I suspect might be the intention of the amendment, given that it has been tabled by those who do not want the adjudicator to be in place at all.