Herbert: Supermarket Ombudsman needed to ensure a fair market
5 January 2010
Speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference today, Shadow Environment Secretary, Nick Herbert will call for a new age of agriculture and pledge a future Conservative Government to create a supermarket Ombudsman to curb abuses of power by the major food retailers.
A New Age of Agriculture
In the speech Nick Herbert will say:
“The Government’s belated recognition that food security matters will have little credibility after more than a decade in which they have devalued British agriculture and allowed domestic production to decline. Ministers cannot will the end of higher food production without ensuring the means.
“It’s not enough to talk loosely about a fair market or the need for better labelling. We need action, with a supermarket Ombudsman and legislation to enforce honest labelling if the retailers won’t act. It’s meaningless to talk about a competitive agricultural industry while increasing the regulatory burden on farmers and failing to take the necessary action to deal with Bovine TB.
“For too long, farming has been treated by government at best as though it doesn’t matter and at worst as an expensive problem. The short-sighted response to the decades of food surplus was to believe that domestic production was no longer important. But today we face the extraordinary new challenge of feeding a rapidly rising global population against a background of profound environmental change, and now even those who have been careless about farming can see that food production matters again.
“The last decade was characterised by the creation of a government department whose name didn’t even mention farming or agriculture. Now we are entering a new age of agriculture, where farming matters once more. The goal must be to increase global production sustainably, feeding the world without depleting natural resources.
“In this new age of agriculture, British farming has a bright future. But that requires a new start, where government understands that we cannot take farmers closer to the market while undermining their ability to compete. If we want to ensure food security in 2030 and beyond, we need to begin by valuing the agricultural industry that will deliver it.”
Supermarket Ombudsman
In his speech, Nick Herbert will commit a future Conservative Government to create a supermarket Ombudsman as a dedicated unit in the Office of Fair Trading:
“Supermarkets deliver real benefits but some aspects of the way they treat their suppliers can harm consumers as well as producers. We have a new code of practice which outlaws unacceptable practices such as retrospective discounting, but this isn’t worth the paper it is written on without effective enforcement.
“While the Government dithers the Conservatives are clear: we will introduce an Ombudsman to curb abuses of power which undermine our farmers and act against the long-term interest of consumers. As the Competition Commission has made clear, failure to do so could result in reduced investment by suppliers, lower product quality, and less product choice, with potentially higher prices in the long run. It is time to act.”