Food Prices and Food Poverty

Debate between Mary Creagh and Philip Davies

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Such offers increase the volume of sales, but often reduce the margin. That places enormous capital and liquidity costs on small companies in order to fund that as they wait for the money to come in from the supermarket.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I cannot allow that to stand. As somebody who worked for a supermarket chain for 13 years, may I tell the hon. Lady that suppliers used to fall over themselves to come to retailers and ask to do buy one, get one free offers or three for the price of two offers, because it was a good marketing tool for them? When I worked for Asda, we used to ask them whether we could have every-day low prices instead of all those offers, but it was the suppliers who were pushing buy one, get one free offers. The idea that supermarkets are forcing them on them is just guff.

[Mary Creagh]

That is interesting. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have a range of suppliers who will appear in the press tomorrow to say that the groceries code adjudicator is not required. No doubt they will make their thoughts very clear through the Food and Drink Federation, which represents the sector. However, I will not hold my breath for that. I like shopping in Asda, but I am not sure that it represents the sunlit uplands that the hon. Gentleman remembers from his happy times working there.

We want the Government to act swiftly on the grocery ombudsman. That will lead to less pressure on suppliers and an end to unfair competition, and greater price transparency in the supermarket sector. We want supermarkets to commit to clearer price labelling, particularly on those buy one, get one free promotions. If they do not do so voluntarily, Government should act. We call on supermarkets to commit to sending their in-date food waste to charities such as FareShare, which will ensure that it goes to a good home. We want supermarkets to publish the amount of food they waste, and if they do not do so, the Government should take action in the next waste review. We want supermarkets to commit to recycling more of that food to hungry children and less to landfill.

We call on DEFRA Ministers to work with stakeholders to define food poverty, identify the extent and scale of the problem and commit to tackling it. We have heard about the extent of the problem today and the obscenity of food being wasted while people are going hungry in our towns and cities, but anecdotes are not evidence. We ignore the perfect storm of rising food prices, falling incomes and food poverty at our peril.