My noble friend raises an interesting point and I thought that I would wait to hear whether the noble Baroness prayed in aid paragraph 16. I worry about the very broad nature of the power that the adjudicator gets in paragraph 16 to do whatever he or she thinks is appropriate to perform the functions. It seems sensible enough, but I am mindful of what the large retailers are saying to us in respect of them having to pay a levy to fund the operation of the adjudicator and there being very little protection for them as to how much that would cost. Paragraph 16 as it stands seems to give a very wide power that leaves them vulnerable to some considerable costs. I wonder if the Minister needs to reflect on whether there is a way to give some protection to the levy payers to make sure that, were this interpreted by a frivolous adjudicator who thought there were some incidental things to the carrying out of functions, they could not go slightly berserk and incur quite a large cost on those levy payers.
Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [HL]
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Knight of Weymouth
(Labour)
in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 26 June 2012.
It occurred during Debate on bills
and
Committee proceeding on Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [HL].
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
738 c96GC 
Session
2012-13
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-11-28 15:09:02 +0000
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