Fairtrade Certification

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse.

Picture the scene: Downing Street in December and jolly Christmas trees sparkling away. No, it is not “Love Actually”, but the moment—exactly 24 hours ago, I think —that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes), other officers of the all-party parliamentary group and I handed in the petition of 22,000 constituents. Such was the volume of names, the petition was in a blue cardboard box, carrying the logo that my hon. Friend described, with the distinctive swirly light-green and blue with a dot connoting a person. It was the Fairtrade logo, which people trust. It is like a kitemark.

When we buy stuff with the Fairtrade logo—bananas or whatever it is—we know what it means. As people have described, there is a minimum price guarantee for the farmer, and there is the Fairtrade premium—the financial bonus for community projects. Certification is a two-way bargain. On their side, the person being supplied has to provide transparent contracts. There are lots of things that these smallholders—they are often tiny farmers—find difficult, like getting finance up front, before the harvest season. Under the Fairtrade scheme, they can get money up front.

The scheme is about people, sustainability and community first, before naked transactional profit. Smallholding farmers can club together and get a lot more access to international markets than they would be able to get on their own. The scheme increases their bargaining capacity. It is also democratic and run on co-operative—I am a member of the Co-operative party—principles. The premium could go to football pitches, tuition fees or classrooms; that is decided by the community.

I do not know whether I am the only one in the room old enough to remember the 1980s and the advert with the man from Del Monte. Do you remember him, Mrs Hobhouse? He was a little bit neocolonialist in his hat and linen suit, and he swooped into a paradise-like community. Well, it was not all paradise, was it? He was on a plantation somewhere or other—it was an unnamed location—stroking his beard and inspecting fruit produce. It was some far-off location—somewhere in sunny climes. He was this western impresario and the community were all there, with their great expectations. In the end, the cliffhanger was resolved with a thumb up—“The man from Del Monte, he say yes!”, as one of the urchin children said. I like to think that in this day and age, it would be a certified, kitemark-able, Fairtrade business and the little urchin would be going to a school provided by this system and enjoying kicking a ball about on a pitch built with these community funds. That is what we would like to think, but it is an uneven playing field, as people have described.

The Minister is wearing a jolly waistcoat himself for this debate. It is very festive—I like it.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Chris Bryant)]

It is British.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

It is made in Britain, but not everything can be. Bananas, coffee, chocolate—that is what we are talking about. The man from Del Monte said yes. In the time that has elapsed since the mid-’80s, when that advert was first shown, British consumers have become more demanding and sought more reassurance. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) referred to palm oil. In 2018, there was the advert for Iceland—not the country; the frozen food giant—that showed the orangutan who was sad that his habitat was disappearing because of palm oil. People are becoming more and more discerning. There is a worry, though, because we are in a cost of living crisis and people are looking for cheaper alternatives, which are not necessarily the ethical things, if the prices of those things are too many multiples of the cost of the standard-price item.

The petition that we handed in says that manufacturers should not be penalised for doing the right thing. We should not always be rushing to a lowest common denominator situation. This campaign for fair trade, which all our constituents are behind, links to concerns about deforestation and about fast fashion. Is it worth getting something for £4 from Primark if it comes with a real cost of many litres of water and hardship?

The petition looks particularly at tea, the national drink—we all enjoy a cuppa. At a time when the UK is seeing the biggest uplift to workers’ rights ever, in one go, this debate is about those things we cannot get at home: bananas, coffee, chocolate, flowers, tea, cotton and gold. They are all implicated when we hear of a dark side of undesirable practices in businesses’ supply chains: human rights abuses, environmental damage, child labour—all sorts of things. We are now outside the EU—something that I regret—and we are looking for free trade agreements. In that pursuit, let us not forget fair trade. We do not want farmers to be subject to naked exploitation—modern slavery.

The indicators are good. Quarter 3 of this year spanned Fairtrade fortnight, which was the end of September to the beginning of October, and figures from the Fairtrade Foundation show that Fairtrade tea sales were up by 40%—it was a record quarter—confectionary up 20% and coffee up 15%. All the polls show that 95% of shoppers believe that businesses should take responsibility for upholding human rights throughout their supply chains. What we were all trying to say with the petition is that those who already invest in ethical sourcing should not be penalised. Introducing mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence would level the playing field so that those operating responsibility are not undercut by those cutting corners and exploiting loopholes. Such legislation would be the single most cost-effective way to enhance the UK’s reputation as a champion of net zero, too.

At the moment, we have a fragmented system, with different logos, such as the swirly one I mentioned and those of the Rainforest Alliance, Red Tractor and so on. It is a little inconsistent. We should have one system for all, with an enforceable and consistent framework to protect people and planet. We should protect small-scale farmers and workers worldwide against a race to the bottom with fair prices. When we delivered the petition yesterday, I found out that Sainsbury’s has a human rights department—that I did not know. Other supermarkets are available, of course—Waitrose, the good old Co-op and so on.

We also want to continue our transition to net zero. The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has gone—that’s Lib Dems for you—but he mentioned the aid budget cut. It was in our manifesto that we will work towards restoring that budget, so I hope that we will be able to do that when time allows. The main asks of the petition are a UK law on human rights and environmental due diligence; encouragement of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the tea sector, progressing towards living incomes and living wages for tea growers; and honouring of our climate finance obligations and, when time allows, restoration of our aid budget.

This is not just something for far-off places and the man from Del Monte. In 2003, Ealing council passed its first fair-trade measure and the Ealing Co-op was very active in Fairtrade fortnight, garnering some of those 22,000 signatures. My alma mater, Notting Hill girls’ school, is apparently now a Fairtrade school. St Stephen’s church and many other faith communities locally have also campaigned for fair trade.

If you want any more persuading of the good souls behind this cause, Mrs Hobhouse, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North can attest, yesterday our cardboard box attracted a lot of attention from, if not Downing Street’s most famous inhabitant, certainly the most consistent one in my time in this place, which has spanned six different Prime Ministers: the contented purring that we heard proved to us that Larry the cat is on side as well.