Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords]

Debate between Philip Davies and Eilidh Whiteford

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point about the markets in which the supermarkets operate, but does he at least concede that the power imbalance between the supermarket and the supplier is often very unfair, and that supermarkets have consistently pushed the costs and risks of doing business on to the supplier at the end of the food chain?

[Philip Davies]

No, I do not agree with that at all. I will come on to this point in a bit more detail soon, but the hon. Lady is forgetting something. The big supermarkets, without a shadow of a doubt, are massive companies that have hundreds of stores in their chains. By definition, a viable supplier to a supermarket chain has to be a very big company as well, otherwise it would not have the wherewithal to supply all the supermarket’s branches. When I get to the detail of my new clauses, I will talk about the thresholds that the Bill should apply. She will see that far from it being the case that vast supermarkets are being awful to very small suppliers, many of the suppliers are bigger than the supermarkets that they are supplying. She ought to bear that in mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who knows a great deal about this subject.

If people want to transfer money to suppliers either, in their idealistic world, from supermarkets or, in the real world, from their constituents, and if they think that a price worth paying, let them say so. If they reject my new clauses, however, I want them to be clear with their constituents about whom they are benefiting as a result of higher prices and who they will be paying their higher prices to. My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) listed a few of them, but I will give a more extensive list, with your permission, Mr Speaker. We are talking about companies such as Esso, which supplies petrol to supermarkets. Do supporters of the Bill really want to help Esso, which is far bigger than any supermarket chain? Is the purpose of the Bill to enable Esso to go along with its complaint to the adjudicator, so that the adjudicator can faff about looking at a complaint from Esso about Tesco or Asda? Is that what the Bill is all about?

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman’s argument, to which I am listening carefully, seems to have been predicated on the premise that there is no problem, so why on earth would there be a problem between these big corporations?

[Philip Davies]

I will try to put it more simply for the hon. Lady’s benefit: I do not agree with the Bill, as I think I made abundantly clear—I did not want to mislead anybody. If we are to have a Bill, however, I want it to focus on the people I think she had in mind when she decided to support the Bill. If anybody wants to intervene and say that when they had the idea of supporting the Bill, the first company they had in mind was Esso, let them do so.

Daylight Saving Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Eilidh Whiteford

Friday 20th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

That is right, and I agree.

I will conclude my remarks, because I know that other people want to speak. Ultimately, it is a quality of life issue. One thing that struck me after the last debate on the Bill was that a huge number of people from England, mostly older people who remember the last trial, got in touch with me by letter, phone or e-mail. They all said the same thing: “This was a disaster when they did it in the ’70s.” They found it miserable getting up, going to work and delivering things in the dark. People who remember it did not like it. Ultimately, that has to be our arbiter: is this going to be helpful for our quality of life? I know that it is going to impact more on my part of the world than some other parts of these islands. For the sake of our health and well-being, we need to think carefully before messing around with something that might not need to be changed.

[Philip Davies]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) on getting her private Member’s Bill this far. She has certainly got much further than I have with any of mine. I think mine got no further than being heavily defeated on Second Reading—largely by my hon. Friends! I also commend my hon. Friend for the way in which she has conducted herself, always remaining in good humour. In common with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), I think she has great charm; I thought that she was charming only me, so I was disappointed to find out that she had charmed my hon. Friend as well!

I shall speak to the amendments I have tabled in this group, starting with amendment 30, which gets to the nub of the issue. It is similar to the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), who wanted to ensure that the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly agreed to any trial before it went ahead. My amendment would achieve something similar, but it relates to subsection (4) rather than subsection (3).

As the provision is drafted, we have the curious position whereby we have to

“obtain the agreement of the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland”—

something I wholeheartedly support—

yet only

“consult the Scottish Ministers and the Welsh Ministers.”

I have heard the debate and heard the assurances both from the Minister and from my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point that, as far as they are concerned, no trial will go ahead if there is opposition from Scotland, Wales or other parts of the United Kingdom. That is fine: I accept those assurances and I accept their intention. What we have to deal with, however, is what is in the Bill before us, and notwithstanding all the good intentions, that is not what the Bill says.