Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the capacity of the Grocery Code Adjudicator to extend the scope of its remit to relations between milk producers and processors.

The remit of the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) stems from the Competition Commission Report of 2008 which found evidence that the large supermarkets were using their buying power unfairly against their direct suppliers.

The Groceries Supply Code of Practice was introduced in 2009 as a voluntary measure to deal specifically with this issue. In 2013 the GCA was introduced to give legal underpinning to the Code.

Changes to the GCA remit require changes to the 2013 Act. It is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills to decide if this is necessary.

The Government takes this issue very seriously. Included in the 2013 Act is a legal requirement to review the GCA. The first Review is in 2016. This will give us the opportunity to consider further the scope of the GCA.