My Lords, the amendment goes back to the basic problem about the relations within the food supply chain between the supermarkets and small and medium-sized suppliers and all the attempts to enforce the code and its predecessors without statutory backing. Whether we like it or not, there is an atmosphere of apprehension, anxiety and fear among small suppliers to supermarkets, and a feeling that if they raise problems with the supermarkets under the code, they are in danger of retaliatory action at some later stage—their contracts will be ended, curtailed or put on to a less beneficial basis.
I am aware that this was discussed in Committee and indeed there have been discussions about it since it was first raised, but Clause 2 still appears to allow disputes to be referred to the adjudicator only by the supplier themselves or, alternatively, by the large retailer. My amendment would explicitly allow a case to be referred to the adjudicator by a third party—an appropriate trade association or a farming union—and this would relate to issues that covered more than one supplier, or perhaps only one supplier but where there were general implications of the outcome of that particular case. The amendment would allow third party initiation by a trade association or farming union but possibly also other third parties that were appropriate—for example, an agricultural charity.
This would not be an open-ended requirement. As with the large retailer, the adjudicator would not have to take the case under this amendment. While Clause 2 requires the adjudicator to take a case from the supplier, although not the large retailer, my amendment would give the adjudicator sufficient grounds for not taking it, on the grounds either of it being trivial or vexatious or because of a lack of prima facie evidence. The argument that this would be used against the supermarkets on spurious grounds by campaigners who were opposed to supermarket activity in unrelated fields would not be a good reason for rejecting the amendment. It would relate to genuine supplier problems but it would protect the supplier, the farmer and the small business from the fear of being retaliated against at a later stage. It would support that supplier if the NFU or trade association took up the case.
I appreciate that the Minister may not like the wording—her officials rarely do—but this must be something on which she could go a little further than she did in Committee to assure us that third parties could take such cases. Only that, I feel, would put an end to the apprehension and the fear among small and not so small suppliers, which are at a serious disadvantage with supermarkets. They would be protected under this code and other legislation. I beg to move.