The Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill or how to raise food prices without helping suppliers

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The Queen’s Speech setting out the government’s proposed legislative programme is, as these things always are, something of a curate’s egg. There’s some pretty sensible stuff – pension reforms, some regulatory reform, scrapping (I thought we already had though) the Audit Commission and some reform to the electoral register that will make cheating a little harder.

But there are some bad bits – the blogs will be crammed with comment, even rage, about the surveillance bill so I’ll leave commenting on that to others. However there is another dreadful proposal - an unholy stitch up between metropolitan foodies and the National Farmers Union. It has the quite innocuous title of the “Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill”. It is a bill to put up food prices.

It’s not portrayed in that way of course but rather as a benign measure aimed at stopping the big grocers – let’s be blunt here, the big supermarket chains plus the Co-op – from wielding their market power with suppliers. But no-one asks about what wielding that market power actually means to the British public.

So let me explain. When supermarkets screw suppliers – large and small – down to the floor they do so in their own interests. And in the interests of consumers. That’s right, you and I benefit from the evil supermarkets buying stuff as cheaply as possible and on the most flexible of terms. Not only that but the consumers who gain the most from the evil business practices of the supermarkets are the consumers who need that gain most – the poor. Whatever I may think of supermarkets – and I’m no particular fan – there is no doubt that delivering on their promise of cheap food has been the single biggest contribution to alleviating poverty in the last fifty years.

However much the supply chain likes the proposed Bill and however much the competition (the Association of Convenience Stores are big fans) want it to happen, nothing should cover up the fact that the proposals will result in higher food prices. Maybe not by much but rest assured prices of staple foods – eggs, butter, flour, cheese, bread and so forth – will be higher. Which is why the ACS likes the Bill – it removes, at a stroke of the pen, some of the supermarkets’ competitive advantage thereby making a direct contribution to those stores’ bottom line.

The saddest thing is that – faced with higher prices from UK suppliers – the big supermarkets will look overseas. Rather than having some clipboard wielding jobsworth determining prices, the buyers will head to Poland, to Serbia and to Bulgaria where they’ll by milk, meat and flour to sell in their shops. Far from protecting the livelihoods of hill farmers, these proposals are just as likely to accelerate that vocation’s decline.

The Grocery Code Adjudicator Bill will raise food prices. And there’s no evidence at all that it will make life any better for suppliers.

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The Queen's Speech - a translation

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In recent weeks I have been at meeting discussing housing policy, working with young people, employment programmes, the future of charities and the "third sector", planning controls and culture. No-one is interested in what the current Labour Government plans to do - and I mean no-one - because they all know it'll be gone in a few months.

I was going to give a little bill-by-bill assessment - but you know, I can't be bothered. I gather the speech was something like this:

"Bankers are bad and my Government will kick them around a bit without really changing anything so as to get some headlines. But my Government thinks government is good and will pass a law to say so.

My Government will spend a lot of money they haven't got on buying the votes of - sorry providing free care for - some older people and their families. My Government also likes children and will provide suitcases and sleepovers for those in care - plus a set of yet to be specified guarantees.

My Government believe criminals are nearly as bad as bankers so will kick them around a bit too - but not quite as much. My Government also thinks people who watch films on their computers are bad too - at least that's what friends of the Secretary of State for Business tell us from their Greek-based yachts. These people will have their Internet taken away until they promise to behave.

My Government will pass a law supporting a technology that doesn't work so as keep MPs from former mining communities happy. And my Government will act to make everyone except straight white men with posh accents more equal

My Government will also publish Bills to reform the House of Lords, discourage bribery, abolish child poverty by 2010 and commit to spending more and more cash on international aid but has no intention of passing these into law having secured political advantage."

The good news is that most of this rubbish won't happen. The bad news is that we're to spend the next six months wasting time, money and newsprint on discussing this excuse for a legislative programme.

As I said before - can we have a bloody election, NOW!

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It's an election we want Nick...and we want it now!

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Nick Clegg clambered up onto the limited soap box provided by the Independent to get all radical and angry about the Queen's Speech.

...and what does he want?

1. Fixed term parliaments - so MPs get a solid four or five years to feather their nests?
2. State funding for politics - so all the aspirant MPs can get cushy jobs at party HQ
3. An electoral system designed to give the Lib Dems a permanent hold over Government
4. A House of Lords filled with still more washed up old hacks
5. A "code of conduct" for candidates - as if the electorate can't spot the scumbags

Nick, you're a nice man and they say you're very bright...but what people want is an election. And they want it now!

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