Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Bishop of Wakefield and Viscount Eccles
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield
My Lords, I need to leave fairly soon, so I want to add something about this particular suggestion. I want to address also a broader point, since this is tied into the whole issue of financial penalties.
I was grateful to the Minister for her comment about changing culture. This is another small way in which the culture might be changed. But the crucial issue we need to grasp is that changing any culture will require whether we like it or not—and it is not a pleasant word—coercion. That is at the heart of much of what we are saying here. I do not know enough about the latest statistics to be able to respond to what the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles said a few moments ago, but, certainly, in our part of the world dairy farms are still closing and, certainly, an analysis of the past 10 years would show that the capacity for milk production has reduced. I do not know what the figures are for importing milk, but I think they have gone up significantly over these years.
All these things lead us back to innovation, which seems to be a key word to use. It is a positive word. It goes back to changing cultures and is not about punishing people. It is about trying to find a proper balance within the market, so that suppliers and retailers are doing something which has a synthesising effect: they are working together. Therefore, I hope very much that some sort of response will come from the Government at this stage. If it does not, I fear that these same questions will be asked on Report. I would gently support this pair of amendments, but in the end they push us back to the same issues that we have been looking at. If we do not face those issues, we shall still end up in a situation where we do not alter the present culture.
Viscount Eccles
Before the right reverend Prelate sits down, can I ask him whether he believes that coercion is the only way to change culture?
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield
No. It depends on what you mean by “coercion”, which can mean something very unpleasant indeed. It does mean that people will not necessarily change the way that they operate simply because we ask them to be nicer. That is the point. We know that, otherwise we would not have produced the sort of legislation that we are debating today. Even if we do not go down some of the roads that we have been debating, the whole Bill seems imply that the adjudicator must have some powers by which the present situation is changed. How you want to use the word “coercion” is another matter. I would not want it to be overpressed. After all, the worst form of coercion always leads to war and that is not what we are talking about—we are talking about precisely the opposite—but it will need firmness and robustness.