Cost of Living

Debate between Laura Sandys and Tim Farron

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

There is a bunch of things that we can do. I thank my hon. Friend for asking the question. We can ensure that there is a fair and decent referee in the groceries code adjudicator. Through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and our other missions, we can help our farmers to have an export market, because they will get a much better deal from the supermarkets if the supermarkets know that there is someone else who the farmers can sell to and who will compete. We also need to invest in research and development to help people improve their effectiveness and efficiency. I will come back to that point if I have time.

[Laura Sandys]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue of contracts is also important? The relationship between supermarkets and producers is extraordinary in that they often have no contracts whatsoever.

[Tim Farron]

Yes, farmers need to be encouraged and enabled to co-operate. I always thought that it was peculiar that the milk marketing board was got rid of because it was a monopoly—what the heck is a supermarket, for pity’s sake? It is important that there is balance in the market.

The reality is that unregulated markets do not work. I believe in a free market, but markets are not free when there are powerful entities that control them. Markets do not always work in the interests of the people who are being exploitative. It is not in the interests of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda or Morrisons to exploit their farmers, even though they often do so. I acknowledge that they do good things too. As John Maynard Keynes once said, among the many other wise things that he said,

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

The supermarkets are putting people out of business, despite the fact that it is not in their long-term interests, just because it is in their short-term interests.

That highlights something that this Government and all Governments have failed to do—set out a coherent food production strategy for the country. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet said earlier, over the next 40 years the population of planet Earth will increase by about 50%, but the demand for food will roughly double. If we as a country preside over a 25% drop in our ability to feed ourselves, as we have over the past 30 years, it is completely witless and massively damaging. The food crisis—I say that with no exaggeration at all—that the planet faces and that this country will face is at least as big a concern as climate change and, dare I say it, is a bigger concern than the economic crisis.

That challenge must be met. It must be met by having regulation of our market, with a referee to make sure the market is fair and effective, and the groceries code adjudicator will do that. We also need to have an integrated strategy, so that our approach to common agricultural policy reform is focused primarily on maximising sustainable food production; we have a science policy that has food production at the top of the agenda—research and development is crucial to ensuring that we maximise the amount of food we produce in this country—and we have a planning policy that is fit for purpose and allows rural areas and rural businesses to develop, so that they can meet the needs of this country. The reality is that people’s ability to enter the farming industry and to provide the food that this country desperately needs also depends on young people being able to afford a home of their own for their family in a rural area.