Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I have looked at that with some care and he is quite right that the things said by Waitrose during these procedures have been more positive than some of the things said by other supermarkets. If you read the compliance reports in the supermarkets’ annual reports and accounts—those that are available—you will find that they are all complying, and doing so in cheerful and positive way. That is why I want the OFT, under paragraph 7 of the code—it gets all the reports and it has all the information—to give its assessment and judgment of the extent to which the supermarkets are complying in a cheerful and positive manner with this code. My belief is that they are complying. I have sought to find out the views of the supermarkets and all their responses have been 100% positive; not one has put up any kind of negative response. Their trade association’s response has been, “We are going to make this thing work. We are making this thing work. We do not really think that an adjudicator will help, but we may have to have one”. That is perhaps the attitude I am taking—if we have to have an adjudicator, we will get on with it. I do not think the argument that Waitrose stands out as an exception runs.