Comment: New bill is unlikely to make major difference to suppliers

First of all came an announcement from one of the big boys to say that it was going to source all of its lamb from Scotland for one of its top ranges from now until the end of December.

That is good news for the industry, and especially for the 400 or so lamb producers supplying the supermarket – it was fitting that Nigel Miller, NFU Scotland president, called it a boost for the sheep sector.

But a couple of days later, an eagle-eyed NFUS employee saw on the same retailer’s website – and here I pause to hope that he was not doing some online shopping in work hours – an advert for a buyer for the company.

The job advert stated that the person would achieve their savings targets either by “buying for less, getting someone else to pay, re-engineering the contract or using less”. All of this jargon, I thought, could be translated to: screwing the supplier any way possible.

Interestingly, the advert disappeared shortly after it was brought to the company’s attention, followed by an admission of error from the supermarket.

My first experience of supermarket power was more than a quarter of a century ago, when my brother – who grew high-quality soft fruit – supplied some of the big boys.

He found out then that its more junior buyers, intent on climbing the corporate ladder, would try to hammer out ever more exacting conditions accompanied by ever-reduced prices.

Since then, as a reporter, I have heard many tales of supermarket power hitting the small-scale supplier but whenever I attempted to publicly highlight this, fear of losing the contract silenced the wronged.

On one occasion – without contacting either party as it was a comment piece – I remarked on the link between one pre-packer issuing redundancy notices on the same day that one of the retailers with whom it dealt announced record profits.

When the article appeared in the paper, I received a call from the packer saying I had never again to mention his company in the press, as he had been threatened with losing his contract with the supermarket.

It is all about muscle in the market and too few farming organisations and pre-packers have muscle. Even the big meat companies will quietly tell you tales of how their tails are twisted by the major retailers.

That is why I groan whenever I hear a politician claim that all this inequality in the supply chain will be sorted out when the groceries adjudicator bill comes through. Increasingly, this piece of legislation has appeared to be a mirage on the horizon – ever beckoning but never coming nearer.

It has now passed through the House of Lords and will make an appearance in the Commons once the MPs come back from their summer holidays.

Much was expected of this piece of legislation when it made its first appearance, stating its primary objective was to ensure the major retailers dealt “fairly and lawfully with suppliers”.

It came about after a Competition Commission report in 2008, which, among other findings, reported a “climate of fear” among suppliers.

Just how many teeth this adjudicator tiger will have left when the bill emerges from Westminster remains to be seen, but already it has been made clear that the remit is only between the big supermarkets and their suppliers.

And, during its passage in the Lords last month, it was clarified that the adjudicator would have only a limited role to play in battles, such as that currently going on over milk prices.

The secrecy clause allowing suppliers to complain about a supermarket’s terms with anonymity is ideal in theory, but it has its drawbacks. Last week I attended a seminar showing the current potato supply situation in Great Britain. Basically, we now have ten major pre-packers supplying five major retailers. I reckon that, if there was a complaint in that small grouping, I would know who it was within five minutes, followed a few minutes later by a notice of that pre-packer being delisted.

I may be too cynical, but I cannot see a bunch of politicians – who have seen their party funds enlarged by supermarket company largesse – allowing any impediment to receiving future dollops of cash by including clauses that merely protect the lowly primary producer.