Shadow Minister Dame Harriett Baldwin highlights the success of the Groceries Code Adjudicator in protecting farmers but raises concerns that Government actions, notably the family farm tax, are now threatening our vital food producers.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) on securing the debate. It will perhaps come as news to him that I, too, was one of the people who voted for the Groceries Code Adjudicator. I was a Member during the coalition Government and it was put on the statute book back in 2013 because our farmers wanted an adjudicator to tackle the imbalance between small producers of food and big supermarket buyers. We will always back our farmers for fairness and equity for food producers.
The adjudicator regulates relationships between the UK’s largest grocery retailers and their direct suppliers, and it ensures that excessive risks and unexpected costs are not unfairly transferred. It brings fairer prices to the farming community and provides a guardrail for those smaller food producers who do not have a voice in the complicated food production market. It is funded by a pragmatic levy on designated retailers, with a UK annual turnover of more than £1 billion. There are currently 14 retailers covered by the code.
The results from the annual survey in 2024 show that the adjudicator is making a difference. More than 3,000 responses to that survey show that the number of suppliers experiencing a code issue has fallen to 33% and that the number of suppliers highlighting a retailer’s response to a cost price increase as an issue almost halved, falling from 28% in 2023 to just 16%. For the first time, the Co-op came top of the 14 retailers for overall code compliance, at 98%. The Co-op and Lidl both experienced a 2% improvement, which was the biggest percentage improvement across the 14 retailers.
The adjudicator is there to protect suppliers, such as our precious farmers. However, we are concerned that the Government’s recent actions have done anything but protect our farmers. Food retailers and suppliers of all sizes are under huge pressure because of Labour’s tax on jobs, its increasing red tape around jobs, food inflation and job losses in supermarkets. Labour’s family farm tax is yet another blow. It is a death tax on important family businesses. With no farmers in the UK, there would be no UK-grown food. Under Labour, the family farm will wither and die unless the Chancellor can be persuaded to change her mind.
Food producers are at the heart of our communities and the Government should be doing everything they can to support them, not harm them, and to ensure food security in this country. The attack on our farmers is shocking in every way. The Labour MPs who voted for an inheritance tax on family farms simply do not understand where their food comes from. Labour is harming our farms, not prioritising our rural areas. It simply does not understand.
The Conservatives believe that good policy needs to be created in collaboration with the farming industry, rather than in isolation. We have always kept the Groceries Code Adjudicator under review since its inception and we urge the Government to continue to do so.