And Traidcraft warns that the effectiveness of any review of the GCA which is based solely on procedural statistics, like number of investigations, will be diminished due to the ‘climate of fear’ that persists in the supermarket supplier community.
Rather, the effectiveness of the GCA should be based on a reduction in the ‘transfer of excessive risks and unexpected costs by retailers onto suppliers’ – identified during the two-year investigation by the Competition Commission.
Fiona Gooch, Traidcraft’s senior policy adviser, said: “Without the power to penalise supermarkets, which have breached the Groceries Code, the Adjudicator will be impotent.
“More than three years ago everyone in the grocery sector accepted the Competition Commission’s assessment that excessive risks and unexpected costs are transferred by retailers to suppliers and so it is time to draw a line under these endless consultations and move to implementation of the desperately needed Adjudicator.
“Traidcraft urges the government to find an opening in the parliamentary calendar to adopt this legislation in the first parliamentary session.”
Traidcraft’s director of policy and programmes, Paul Spray, added: “Supermarkets benefit from the labour and entrepreneurship of farmers in developing countries and they have waited long enough to receive fair terms of trade.
“The suggestion that the cost of funding an Adjudicator will have an effect on food prices to supermarket customers is ludicrous; with combined annual sales in the UK of more than £120 billion, the £800,000 cost spread across the ten large retailers will get lost in the rounding. And it is certainly insignificant compared to the negative impact on consumers if the government fails to establish an Adjudicator.”
