Draft Fair Dealing Obligations (Milk) Regulations 2024

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve once again with you in the Chair, Mr Gray.

I am grateful to the Minister for his good explanation and introduction. I echo his points about the excellence of the UK dairy sector. The regulations have been a long time coming: people in the industry have been pressing for change for a decade or more. It is almost four years to the day that we sat here discussing the Agriculture Act 2020 which paved the way for the regulations today. I am aware there has been full consultation and, I suspect, a fair amount of negotiation behind the scenes, and I share the Minister’s view that producers and processors are largely happy. If it is good enough for them, it is clearly good enough for me, so we will not oppose the regulations today.

I welcome the new regulations. But the delays have meant that too many dairy farmers have suffered while waiting for them. It is right that contracts be in writing and as transparent as possible, with clear pricing terms through either a fixed or variable price and a proper explanation of how the price to be paid is generated. Farmers do need to be empowered to challenge prices if they feel the correct process has not been followed, and they should be able to terminate contracts within a longer cooling-off period or if a buyer misses payments. It is right that any alterations to a contract will have to be agreed by both parties rather than buyers just changing their minds unilaterally.

As ever, enforcement is critical. The Government have chosen to create another adjudicator, in addition to the Groceries Code Adjudicator. As the Minister said, the post is currently being advertised through headhunters on a significant salary. It is not clear why a separate system and a new enforcement agency should be set up when we already have the Groceries Code Adjudicator. We touched on this during the passage of the Agriculture Act, four years ago, when we argued that the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator could be extended and possibly facilitated by the additional funds allocated to the new agency.

Can the Minister explain why he has chosen not to consolidate and streamline those tasks within one body, particularly as the activities concerned are similar, well-aligned and actually overlap? Why will the adjudicator sit within DEFRA rather than enjoy the independence that the GCA has? As we anticipate further fair dealing regulations in other sectors, we could end up with a plethora of such adjudicators—I am not sure what the collective noun would be. I cannot help feeling that this is something that could end up being revisited in the future, so it might be sensible to try to work out why it is being done now.

The explanatory memorandum states:

“There is a small anticipated negative financial impact on the public sector”—

beautifully worded—

“for the set up and maintenance of the new enforcement agency.”

In other words, it will cost money—obviously. Can the Minister tell us how much this process will cost?

In the Minister’s introduction, he said that the adjudicator will be in place by the time the regulations come into effect. I have heard comments from the industry, which welcomes the regulations, that they will be implemented in 12 weeks. That is quick, which is good because we want them to take effect, but can the Minister assure us that the adjudicator will be in place by that time? Will he ensure that full guidance will be available? That is important because although the legislation is quite detailed, I suspect that people will look for even more detail, and what we do not want to see is a situation in which rules are enforced but the industry does not quite know how to do that.

I will also just pick up on the points made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which raised the vexed issue of Northern Ireland, where some farmers, of course, are selling directly into the Republic of Ireland, where this legislation would not apply. I wonder whether the Minister could say a little bit more about that.

There is just one other issue that I will raise. We know that there is a lot of waste in the food system, particularly when buyers have a habit of rejecting produce that seems to everybody else in the system to be perfectly acceptable. I wonder whether we have missed an opportunity here to consider waste in the food supply chain. That point was made by an academic, Carrie Bradshaw of the University of Leeds. She has pointed out that none of the Government’s consultations on using the fair dealing powers have made reference to waste. Could the Minister say whether that issue was given any consideration?

Although I appreciate that there are differences in how the dairy sector operates compared with the egg, pork or poultry sectors, which require individual consideration, there is a system-wide problem that needs to be addressed. Again, that came up in the discussions about the Agriculture Act 2020. Have the Government conducted a thorough assessment of the fairness, or lack of it, in the food supply chain as a whole, and where does the Minister think the weaknesses now exist? How much progress has been made in mitigating them?

We need to take complaints from suppliers in the supply chain very seriously; that issue is raised consistently in the food industry. As I say, we do not oppose this measure, but we do not think that the Government have really approached this issue with the pace and urgency that are required. A much more strategic approach is called for. We need to be more confident that the food supply chain works efficiently, effectively and equitably —a market in which risks and rewards are shared more proportionately and fairly. The danger is that if nothing is done to improve the supply chain, more suppliers will be driven to the brink and pull out of producing food all together. Sadly, we are already losing too many British growers and food companies. That is bad for them, bad for the UK in general and bad for UK food security.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

Obviously, this is a cyclical industry and it is particularly distressing when we hear stories of milk being poured into ditches, which of course it should not be, or being disposed of in other inappropriate ways, because of some of the imbalances in the supply chain. Is the Minister confident that the new system will lead to less milk being wasted in that way?

[Mark Spencer]

I actually am. I think this measure will help, because it will mean that there is much more fairness in those supply chains and that those contracts are much more robust in how they are formed. So, I think we will be able to avoid such wastage of milk in the future.

The shadow Minister mentioned devolved Administrations. Of course, we have consulted very closely with the devolved Administrations and they are very supportive of the regulations.

Question put and agreed to.