Fairtrade Certification

Katrina Murray Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) for securing this debate. Clearly, fair trade matters, and it does to all of us. I will spend a little time outlining why it matters so much to me and where I first came across it. Too often in global trade, people who grow and produce the food that we enjoy here in the UK take all the risks—unstable prices, poor conditions, climate pressures—while others further up the supply chain take the reward.

Nearly 20 years ago, I was fortunate enough to be part of a delegation organised by Banana Link, where we met those working on the plantations that produce the majority of the world’s supply of bananas for export, across central and South America. Yes, among those exporters and suppliers was Del Monte. We saw at first hand the exploitation that the banana workers experience: the complete control by the companies and multinationals, the non-payment of wages, the non-provision of healthcare—healthcare is provided only by the plantation owners—and products being sold only in the stores of the companies that people get their wages from. I live close to Robert Owen’s New Lanark, and I was reminded of the things that we got rid of 200 years ago at the beginning of the co-operative movement.

We saw the effect of the environmental pressures. Banana plants showed ash from volcanic eruptions hundreds of miles away. We also met small producers. The good companies—ironically, the ones that had leadership from Scandinavian countries—saw that treating workers fairly is important, that it is good to pay good wages and that Fairtrade is worth shouting about.

Although Fairtrade is important for bananas, it is also important for tea, coffee, cotton, wine, cocoa and sugar cane. Millions of people around the world depend on those products for their livelihoods, yet only a tiny shave of what consumers pay for them reaches those who grow and pick them. That imbalance is not accidental but a result of supply chains that prioritise low prices over fair outcomes. Fairtrade challenges that model and proves that there is a better way.

It is not all international; hon. Members have talked about the choices that we make here at home. I am proud that those values are being lived in my constituency. North Lanarkshire council, which covers Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, is a recognised Fairtrade zone. That reflects a commitment across schools, community groups, workplaces and public services to choose Fairtrade, and the steering group has recognised North Lanarkshire as one of the major distribution hubs in Scotland. Working with the wholesale market on Fairtrade is just as important, so we must ensure that all companies, including small businesses, are able to do that. In Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire council has made similar commitments. The School Yard Kitchen, which is just over my constituency boundary, specialises in how to grow a community between Kirkintilloch and Ghana through chocolate.

Fairtrade is not abstract. For UK businesses, Fairtrade certification makes absolute sense. Colleagues have expressed that in much greater depth. Support for Fairtrade across my constituency shows that the public already understand that, but the Government and business must keep pace and ensure that Fairtrade certification plays a central role in building a fairer, more resilient and more responsible UK trading system.