Stephen Williams' views on supermarkets
Britain's farmers and small shops are in crisis and people are being exploited by supermarkets' ever increasing market power. Consumers faced by local monopolies with only one supermarket are paying excessively high prices, and too many rural shops and farmers are being squeezed out of business.
The Liberal Democrats will introduce a legally binding Supermarket Code of practice along with an Independent Food Market Regulator to ensure a fair price for food. This would ensure that supermarkets will no longer be able to exploit their market power to bully small shops, farmers and other small businesses. Supermarkets' ever increasing power has contributed to high prices for consumers locally where a supermarket can have monopoly, and too many rural shops and farmers are being squeezed out of business with fewer jobs and less choice.
The supermarket revolution has undoubtedly brought many benefits like in-store variety, lower prices, increased efficiency, and even convenience meals, but the negative consequences of supermarket power have also become increasingly apparent:
- Between 1965 and 1990, 15 per cent of small rural settlements experienced the closure of their last general store or food shop;
- Between 1991 and 1997 a total of 4,000 food shops closed in rural areas;
- From 1997-2002, 50 specialised stores such as butchers, fishmongers and newsagents closed every week across the UK;
- Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons control almost 75% of the UK market.
The death of many high streets and rural communities has often been accelerated by growing supermarket dominance. Supermarkets have also undoubtedly contributed to economic hardship among small producers, such as farmers, and to the climate menace of food miles (supermarket lorries travel up to 670 million miles per year.)
My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have always advocated the co-operative development of supply chains founded on a set of fair and transparent principles. The food market is unfair and needs legally enforced rules to govern the relationships between supermarkets, suppliers and consumers. We recognise that in the long term we need an economically and environmentally sustainable UK focused supply chain and will require local authorities to develop sustainable and secure food webs and support small shops in their area.
A Supermarket Regulator would act as a Food Trade Inspector that would have proactive power to break the stranglehold over Britain's food market held by the supermarket "trolleygarchy" and actively investigate abuses of market power. We will create a legally binding supermarket code of practice to ensure tougher, more effective rules for the whole food chain, from farm to fork. This would guarantee that supermarkets do not exploit suppliers, farmers or consumers. A stronger code, backed by a robust regulator and proactive enforcement mechanism, would give suppliers the confidence to innovate and invest in the future and to provide a greater choice with better and fairer priced products.
The Government say that they support a voluntarily code of practice and an ombudsman to enforce compliance. Yet they have failed to stand up to the supermarkets over the last 13 years and present proposals for an ombudsman, whilst being a step in the right direction, are weak, lack any teeth and are ultimately too little too late.
Following the Government's announcement the Conservatives have said that they will create an ombudsman with authority and the powers to take reactive action. This does not go far enough as any ombudsman needs proactive powers to intervene in the market, similar to the powers provided to OFWAT to intervene in the Water Market.
A supermarket ombudsman would be a step in the right direction, but it won't be enough to ensure that farmers get a fair price for their produce. We need far stricter rules governing the relationship between supermarkets and producers, otherwise we will see more and more farmers leaving the industry. Instead of continuing Labour's policy of letting supermarkets cut prices by cutting farmers profits, the Lib Dems would ensure farmers and consumers both get a fair price by creating a legally binding supermarket code, enforced by a proactive Independent Food Market Regulator.
What would you like to do next?
-
Subscribe for updates
Follow the party's activity on...
- Twitter:
- Liberal Democrats
- Facebook:
- Liberal Democrats
- YouTube:
- Liberal Democrats
-
Help out or donate
-
Tell us what you think