Food (Supermarkets)
Good morning. The first item of business is a debate on motion S2M-2056, in the name of Shiona Baird, on supermarkets and the Scottish food chain, and three amendments to the motion.
In this debate on food and supermarkets, we need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about how well we, as a society and a nation, are being served by the dominance of the four big supermarket chains. Three quarters of the United Kingdom grocery sector is dominated by four major supermarket chains. What effect is that concentration of selling and buying power having on Scottish farmers and producers, on local high streets, on local economies and on consumer choice and health?
The chief executive of the Big Food Group plc, which owns Iceland stores, has given a stark warning that we are at a point at which what we do now about supermarkets will set the terms of our social legacy for the future. We can either act now to curb monopolisation or we can allow choice to be cut even further. The supermarkets would have us believe that one of their big advantages is consumer choice. The reality is that most people drive to just one shop and shop there, and so they are unable to make a choice or even a comparison with other shops. Once people are in the supermarket, the choice is between 20 different kinds of over-processed breakfast cereal or six different thicknesses of loo paper.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I really must keep going.
Meanwhile, back in the high street, specialised stores, including butchers, bakers, fishmongers and newsagents, are closing at a rate of 50 a week throughout the UK. General stores have been closing at a rate of one a day. Wholesalers, which underpin the local stores, are closing at a rate of six a week, largely as a result of being sidetracked by supermarkets. Local high streets and economies are being decimated, and what about our food culture and our health? The 2001-02 expenditure and food survey showed that consumption of fresh, raw, unprocessed food had declined, while that of processed food was up. Consumption of green vegetables was down 7 per cent, while consumption of chips was up 6 per cent. Is it just coincidence that the UK's vegetable consumption has declined by almost a third since the 1960s, while the retail dominance of the supermarkets has grown?
Does the member concede that one of the problems for those of us who have some sympathy with what she is saying is that where we are going is a result of consumers exercising the very choice that she claims is being taken away from them?
That is exactly what I am trying to point out. The choice is being taken away by the four major retailers. Where is the choice, if the local butchers and the local bakers are closing down? That is not choice.
Supermarkets now specialise in what they call "healthy options" ranges, many of which are over-processed, high in fat and contain too much salt. Not only that, but the supermarkets charge more for them.
Will the member take an intervention?
No.
A recent survey by the Food Commission showed that buying a basket of those healthy options from a supermarket cost 51 per cent more than buying a basket of standard processed food.
We need the facts of supermarket trading practices to be known. When supermarket prices are cut, the reductions are not achieved by cuts in profits; they are achieved by squeezing the producers, suppliers and competitors. Two-for-one offers are funded by the producers.
I should declare an interest: my family farm, although I am now a sleeping partner. When we grew for supermarkets nearly 10 years ago, our organic leeks were rejected because they were too big for the packaging. We were told, "Sorry, your broccoli crop has grown too well. The heads are too big to sell." The quality was perfect, but the size did not suit. We no longer sell to supermarkets. A local farmer's first cutting of organic cauliflowers was rejected because he had trimmed the leaves too much. He now sells to box schemes and specialist outlets. Presentation and uniformity seem to count more than quality with supermarkets. Farmers, as we all know, are being ruthlessly exploited by the supermarkets. As the NFU Scotland has pointed out, five years ago Scotland had 2,200 dairy producers. That number has fallen to around 1,500. The supermarkets pay dairy farmers 17p to 19p a litre for milk that costs 19p to 20p a litre to produce, and then sell it for 40p to 50p a litre. The figures just do not add up for anyone, apart from the supermarkets.
We have heard a litany of the problems and, as Alasdair Morgan pointed out, we have some sympathy with what the member is saying, but what is the Green solution? Is it the same solution that the Green party will use with regard to the utilities? Will it nationalise the supermarkets in a Green socialist republic?
That just illustrates the paucity of the member's argument.
Answer the question.
I will answer the question.
What we want is fair trade—the farmers themselves talk about that. We want a fair balance between the big retailers, and a real choice between them, independent retailers and small local shops. I cannot understand why Mr Lyon, as a farmer, does not agree with that. Perhaps he has been away from farming for too long.
In recognition of the fact that suppliers are getting a bad deal, a code of practice has been devised in an attempt to ensure a better relationship between supermarkets and suppliers. However, the code is failing. Many farmers are not covered by it, and those who are covered by it appear to be so afraid of recriminations from the supermarkets that they are not lodging complaints. Since the inception of the code in 2002, not a single complaint has been made, yet there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence of bad practice. I have personal knowledge of that, but I do not have the time to go into it. That is why the Green party is calling for an independent overseer of the code to ensure proactively that it is enforced and to protect complainants, and why we are calling for the food supply chain to be covered.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I have had eight minutes already.
That is why the Green party wants and expects the Executive to put pressure on Westminster to ensure that our farmers and producers are getting the fair deal that they deserve. In a nutshell, the choice is stark: ever-increasing dominance of mega-retailers, or—listen carefully, please—a mixed balance of independent retailers and specialist shops, sourcing locally from thriving communities and supported by a wide range of local trades. I ask members to support the motion.
I move,
That the Parliament notes that more than three-quarters of the UK grocery sector is dominated by just four supermarket chains; is concerned about the negative impact that the dominance of supermarkets is having on Scottish farmers, independent retailers, high streets, local economies and consumer choice and health; notes that supermarkets also have significant power to control and lower prices being paid to Scottish producers but fail to translate this into lower prices for consumers; notes the Office of Fair Trading's report that fear among suppliers of being delisted by the major supermarkets is preventing them from complaining under the current Supermarket Code of Practice; calls for an independent overseer of the code of practice who will proactively ensure that it is enforced and who will protect complainants from reprisals, and further calls for the code of practice to apply to the whole food supply chain in order to ensure fair trade for all.
I am certainly not here this morning to champion the supermarkets, but, quite honestly, the appalling scattergun approach of the Greens is simply not credible. Of course there are problems—
Is the minister listening to the NFUS?
I am listening to the NFUS, and I will come back to that.
Of course there are problems in some sectors, which I will address, and problems with enforcement of the code of practice, but to condemn the supermarket industry out of hand on the basis of one or two rather skimpy unrelated facts is simply not good enough for a debate in this chamber.
An efficient, competitive and innovative retail sector makes an important contribution to our economy. Consumers demand choice, even within a store. Shiona Baird suggested that there is no choice within stores and that one needs 22 supermarkets in order to get choice, but that is simply not credible.
The minister talks about choice. The people of Portobello, in my region, will face the devastation of their high street if a new supermarket is built there. They already have nine supermarkets within a 2-mile radius. If the new supermarket is built, that will mean the end of their high street, the end of independent choice and the end—[Interruption.] What is the minister's answer? What does he want to see on the high street? Does he want just supermarkets or a range of different shops?
Rather than being an intervention, that was probably a more forceful speech than the one that we heard earlier. Interestingly enough, however, it was about planning and not about supermarkets; we could have a separate debate on planning law.
The idea that Scottish food producers do not benefit from their association with supermarkets in Scotland is nonsense and is not borne out by the facts. Rowan Glen Dairy Products Ltd supplies probiotic drinks from Newton Stewart; Simply Organic Ltd has contracts with Tesco, Asda and Morrisons; Scot Trout Ltd supplies trout and salmon products to Tesco and Sainsbury's; Kettle Produce Ltd supplies Tesco and Marks and Spencer; and McIntosh Donald Ltd provides a wide range of beef products. Not one of those suppliers is saying anything other than that that business is hugely valuable to them and to the farmers who produce the raw materials.
Having said that, I recognise that there is considerable unease about the way in which certain multiples deal with certain sectors. I accept the point that the NFUS put forward about the milk sector, but Shiona Baird chose to extend that point into every sector and that is not what the NFUS is saying. The NFUS is talking about the relationship between the price in the milk sector—the 17p to 19p per litre that the producer might get—and the price of a litre of milk. Shiona Baird should not jump to the conclusion that that is the sole reason for farm closures of in the dairy sector. In earlier debates, we have discussed the lack of vertical integration in the industry and the structural difficulties that the industry has to deal with because of its over-reliance on selling raw milk.
On vertically integrated co-operatives in the dairy sector, the sector has believed hitherto that it will be difficult to achieve vertical integration and achieve the size that is required to compete with the supermarkets. Will the minister give the Parliament a steer on how easy that might be?
My officials have had discussions on that subject with the Office of Fair Trading and our understanding is that a properly planned programme that sets out how that might be achieved would be looked on with some favour by the industry. We will have to take the matter forward in discussion with the industry and the industry will have to take it forward with the OFT. We do not believe that there is an absolute barrier, as has sometimes been suggested.
The motion draws attention, properly, to the effectiveness and enforceability of the supermarket code of practice, which, as Shiona Baird pointed out, was developed in 2002. The code is enforceable only on certain of our major stores. As Shiona Baird said, no complaints have been made. It is important to note that the Office of Fair Trading, in the review of the code's operation that it undertook earlier this year, was worried about that absence of complaints. As a result, it is carrying out a separate investigation, which is still in progress; I understand that it is expected to be completed shortly. I think that the Parliament will welcome the OFT's independent examination of the operation of the code and I am sure that we will all be interested in the outcome of that audit when it is published.
When the OFT reports on the code of practice and its failings—we all know that it has failed—what will the Executive do? What representation will the minister make to the Department of Trade and Industry? How will he deal with the results of the OFT review?
As always, I will await the outcome of the report before deciding on the tactics and strategy that I will take. We are looking, I hope, for that report to point to how the code of practice can be more properly enforced.
We should not lose sight of the impact of other aspects in relation to Scottish food. We cannot talk about food production without considering the health dimension of what we eat. The Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care has embarked on a series of initiatives to try to ensure that our food industry in Scotland takes up the cudgels of improving our health. Despite the criticisms that were made, it is interesting to note that Asda has been improving its core lines by reducing the levels of salt and sugar in its products. We are setting up a Scottish food and health council, with representation from across all sectors, and we are revisiting the school meals service to try to improve standards.
On the point about trying to get more Scottish produce on to the shelves, there is a partnership agreement commitment to try to ensure that public procurement pays particular attention to suppliers who provide an appropriate level not just of Scottish produce, but of Scottish produce that bears all the hallmarks of farm assurance and standards, to ensure local health.
In the light of European Union directives, what influence can the minister have on public procurement of locally produced food? What guidance will he give so that local authorities can get local produce from local suppliers? At present, there are difficulties with that.
I understand that. As I indicated, we have launched new guidelines for the public sector to try to ensure that there is a wider range of public procurement, which will address the issue. Seasonality can be incorporated into those standards.
On the promotion of food production, way back in 1999 I launched the Scottish food and drink strategy, which has been driven forward by the industry in collaboration with the Executive and has brought about a number of significant improvements. We want to deal with basic—
Will the member take an intervention on that point?
No. I must move on, as I think that I am running out of time.
We are keen to ensure that we implement the "Organic Action Plan" to improve the quality and range of organic produce that is available. We are working closely with the Scottish organic industry and the organics stakeholder group, which has been a valuable forum for the development and implementation of that plan.
In looking at the evidence, one can point to specific elements of the supermarket industry that need close examination. However, I find that the tenor of the motion, which suggests that the supermarket sector is causing all sorts of problems, including the closing down of local communities, simply does not bear close examination.
I have made it clear in my remarks that I regard the operation of the milk sector as a matter that is not just for the supply chain. There are structural issues in the industry and I take on board the point about the investigation that the Office of Fair Trading is undertaking into the operation of the code of practice, but other food sectors in Scotland benefit hugely from the contracts that they receive from the supermarket industry. Without them, there would be a devastating effect on many farmers and primary producers of Scottish food.
I move amendment S2M-2056.4, to leave out from first "notes" to end and insert:
", while recognising that competition matters, including those relating to supermarkets and the food sector, are reserved to the UK Parliament, notes that the Office of Fair Trading is currently carrying out an independent audit of the Supermarket Code of Practice; agrees with the Executive's objective, as set out in A Partnership for a Better Scotland: A Forward Strategy for Scottish Agriculture and Scottish Food and Drink Strategy, of supporting Scotland's food and drinks industry to build on its reputation for high quality and its strong export record and to ensure that more Scottish produce is processed in Scotland; supports the Executive's funding of the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society which assists farmer co-ops, and welcomes the implementation of the Organic Action Plan and the Eating for Health action plan."
There is no doubt that the supermarkets, thanks to their ingenuity and chilling business acumen, have changed the way in which we shop, eat and think in this country. Their phenomenal growth has seen the likes of Tesco reach the stage at which sales in the UK have reached £13 billion.
Yesterday, we heard that the Government is investing £2.1 million to develop the marine energy sector in Scotland. That would not even pay the salary of Tesco's chief executive, which is nearly £3 million. In 2003, it was said that he received 255 times the average income of farmers in the United Kingdom.
The supermarkets will be with us for the foreseeable future and consumers are voting with their feet, which is why supermarkets are so successful. People are work obsessed and impatient and they like convenience, which is why they use supermarkets. They like to be able to buy fresh fruit and DVDs round the clock. They can shop for whatever they like whenever they like. They can buy economy or luxury lines in-store or online. Consumers just want quality, safety, choice and low prices, and as far as they are concerned, they can have that from their supermarkets.
However, all good things have a price. We have in-store bakeries, pharmacies and meat and fish counters, which have taken their toll on the high streets in our towns and villages throughout Scotland. That is why many high streets are littered with "To Let" signs and boarded-up windows. We are all aware of the recent study that said that every time a new supermarket opens, 276 jobs are lost locally.
Supermarkets take advantage of global food production, which also has a cost, because they go for the cheapest rather than the closest source, which runs up food miles. That has environmental consequences.
The crux of today's debate is the power of the big four supermarkets and their impact on Scotland's primary producers. As has been said, the big four control 75 per cent of grocery retail in the UK and Scotland. That leaves suppliers in a vulnerable situation, because they have fewer customers and more purchasing power is put in the hands of fewer supermarket giants. Many people in Scotland believe that that has resulted in some supermarkets abusing their power and being viewed as the private sector's bully-boys.
The supermarkets have soaring profits and someone must pay to allow them to make those profits. At the top of the list are suppliers. Primary producers are at the bottom of the food chain—it is a David and Goliath situation. In 1999, the Rural Affairs Committee took evidence from an economist who told us that only 15p in every pound that is spent on groceries in Scotland goes to the farmer. We must investigate what happens between the plough and the plate. The SNP urges Ross Finnie to investigate the situation locally in Scotland to find out where money goes and what role supermarkets and everyone else play in the food supply chain. We urge him to say that he will do that.
Milk provides the most topical illustration of what is happening. I have read the executive summary of a Milk Development Council report that was published in August, which says:
"Over the past ten years farmgate prices and farm margins have fallen, dairy processor margins have remained fairly constant, while retailer margins have increased across all products."
The NFUS has said that a quarter of family farms in Scotland went under in the past five years, which has a knock-on impact on the rest of the rural economy and not just on farms. That is a problem. We must protect our primary producers, because we need food security in Scotland, as well as Europe and the rest of the world—that rarely comes up in debate.
The current climate favours supermarkets and we must consider how we can tip the balance in favour of suppliers. The code of practice is one avenue for achieving that. The SNP is sympathetic to the sentiments in the Green party's motion and supports the campaign by the NFUS and others to strengthen the code and appoint an independent overseer. However, we must be realistic. Even if an independent overseer is appointed and people are given anonymity, people will not complain, because of the imbalance of power between supermarkets and suppliers. No matter what the circumstances are, supermarkets will always be able to track the source of a complaint. The danger that suppliers will be blackballed always exists, so we must be realistic. The Green party's motion is pretty naive, because it does not offer a wide range of solutions.
If we want to empower suppliers and primary producers, we need Government help through public procurement, so that our suppliers do not have just a few customers but have diverse customers, which include the national health service and education institutions. We need a report from the minister on the extent to which public procurement assists local suppliers. A requirement to cut packaging would also incentivise the procurement of supplies from local sources.
It is important that consumers have the information with which to make informed choices. Labelling is one way to achieve that. If the consumer is informed, they will make better choices. If they know that produce has better welfare standards and is local, they will be more likely to buy it. Providing that information is one way to help suppliers in Scotland.
Supermarkets must compete against one another not only on price—that is not as much of an issue as it used to be—but on welfare standards, freshness, traceability and ethically clean food. If they do that, Scotland will have a huge opportunity, because that will create a win-win situation for Scottish suppliers, which can tick the boxes for all those criteria.
Not only Governments, but consumers, can put pressure on supermarkets. The debate about genetic modification meant that all the supermarkets took genetically modified foods off their shelves because of pressure from the public, and not just from the Government.
We must consider vertical integration and expanding co-operatives. I am pleased that the minister mentioned that.
We ask the minister to convene a summit of supermarkets in Scotland at which he will speak to them directly about all the issues that have been discussed in the debate. It is well within the minister's power to do that, so why does he not go ahead and do it? At least that would offer one way of discussing the issues with supermarket heads. In the past few years, I have pressed the minister in the Parliament to hold such meetings, but few have taken place. Now he has the opportunity to have them.
The over-30-months scheme is affecting the beef sector in particular. The Food Standards Agency gave advice months ago that it is safe for such meat to re-enter the food chain, but we still wait for the scheme to be scrapped. One reason why the beef sector cannot increase its profitability is that it can give beef only to supermarkets. If we can reopen our overseas export markets, suppliers will be able to obtain a better price for their beef, which will allow them to increase their profitability. It is imperative that there is an end to the dithering and delay and that the minister ends the scheme as soon as possible.
I share the member's concern and frustration, but I hope that he accepts that if he were ever to be a minister and the Food Standards Agency produced a report about which the chief medical officers had queries that they wanted to be resolved, he would not wilfully ignore their advice. I accept that the time has come, but I hope that he accepts that a chief medical officer's view should not be wilfully overridden.
If I were the minister, I would ask myself what the purpose of establishing the Food Standards Agency was. Its role is to give the Government independent advice. The Government has ignored and sat on that independent advice for the past 16 months. Surely it should listen to the Food Standards Agency, which it established to give it independent advice.
The Government can address many issues to help suppliers and our farmers in particular. It would help if the minister pulled his head out of the sand and started to be proactive to address the situation, which is a huge concern in rural Scotland. We must do something about it. We have some powers—it is a pity that we do not have more—and we must use them. I urge the minister to take on board and act on some of the proactive and productive ideas that arise from today's debate to help our farmers.
I move amendment S2M-2056.1, to insert at end:
"recognises that the behaviour of supermarkets can be influenced by pressure from informed consumers as well as the government; calls for a Scottish Executive investigation into each sector's share of the profits between the plough and plate and particularly the farmer's share of every pound spent on groceries; further calls on the Scottish Executive to convene a supermarkets' summit to discuss ongoing concerns; recognises that the more local produce on supermarket shelves and less "food miles" the better it is for the environment and costs; supports a public procurement policy that ensures where possible food is sourced locally; notes that the beef sector's profitability can be increased by scrapping the Over Thirty Months scheme in accordance with Food Standards Agency advice, and calls for this to happen."
I was, in speaking to the amendment in my name, going to congratulate the Green party on bringing the subject to Parliament for debate. Unfortunately, Shiona Baird took only two interventions—it is not so much a debate as a lecture. I congratulate George Lyon and Alasdair Morgan on managing to intervene during her opening speech. They obviously know a great secret that I do not.
Not that it did much good.
I agree.
The subject is topical and fairly relevant and touches on two issues. The first has been, and remains, of concern to many communities throughout Scotland, and the second was brought vividly to our attention recently by the lobby from NFUS. I will touch on both subjects.
This morning, Chris Ballance asked me whether my amendment was a bit weaselly, to which the answer is no. He asked whether we could have lodged an amendment that said that we almost agreed with the Greens' motion. As many members have said, one can agree with much in the motion. We thought long and hard about whether to propose adding words to the motion, but were forced to conclude that the second half of the motion's first section—if that is not too complicated—is too prescriptive. It is too simplistic to say that all supermarkets are bad, which is in effect what the motion says. I accept the need for better product information, but to suggest that the dominance of supermarkets is having a negative impact on consumers' health almost defies belief.
Will the member take an intervention?
Unlike the opening speaker for the Scottish Green Party, I will give way.
Does the member accept that the basis of the motion is to challenge the overwhelming power and dominance of the big four supermarkets? As the motion says, those supermarkets have taken over three quarters of retail in the United Kingdom. We are not saying that all supermarkets are always bad—we are saying that the dominance and power of the supermarkets are bad.
That is not what the motion says. If the member studies the motion, he will find that the Scottish Green Party is saying that all supermarkets are bad. That is the only way I can read the motion, although I accept that it deals with the fact that there are four dominant supermarkets.
Despite the wording of the motion, consumers can make one simple choice, which is not to buy from supermarkets. However, year on year they seem to choose to do so. We cannot and should not try to get away from the fact that, on the whole, customers like supermarkets.
The question that we should ask is this: How do we achieve the right balance in a free and competitive society? That question is currently being asked in my nearest market town, Castle Douglas in Galloway, which makes a very interesting example. Castle Douglas is renowned all over the south-west of Scotland as an excellent shopping town. Remarkably, for a town of its size, it retains four butchers, one of whom is a specialist pork butcher, as well as a diverse range of independent retail outlets, very few of which represent national chains. The town draws people from far and wide, to such an extent that come election time it is hardly worth canvassing or leafleting the main street on Saturdays, as most people in it come from outwith the constituency.
There is also a Co-op supermarket within a short distance of the main street. Tesco is now proposing to build another supermarket outwith the town centre, which is the cause of no little controversy. Most of the existing retailers, almost everyone from outwith Castle Douglas and many of those who live in the town are opposed to the proposal and everyone agrees that there is room for only one supermarket in the town. However, one must accept that for many people, especially the less well-off people in the town, the proposal offers greater choice—to begin with, at least—possibly cheaper food and job prospects of sorts. It is a question of balance that is not easy to answer. Like other members, I have considerable reservations about the impact that the opening of a superstore can have, particularly on a small rural community. However, the motion's claim that there is no good side to supermarket development is not true. We accept that supermarket development can have a negative impact, but we cannot accept that that is, as the motion states, always the case. It is not.
We are happy to support the second part of the motion, which draws back from the call that has been made of late for a legal toughening of the supermarket code of practice. I am pleased that the motion does so, as that is the preferable way forward. A code is not a hard-and-fast law, but any code must be enforceable and fair to all parties, and it is crystal clear that the supermarket code of practice is not working for all parties. I suggest that it is working only for the supermarkets.
As other members have said, the current plight of the dairy farming sector illustrates the point all too clearly. As the member for a constituency that has a high proportion of Scotland's dairy farmers, I cannot be other than deeply concerned about that plight. Ross Finnie was absolutely right when he said last week at question time that
"moves must be made towards creating more vertical integration so that we are less dependent on the raw milk price."—[Official Report, 18 November 2004; c 12053.]
I understand that that means revisiting competition law, which is a UK matter, but one on which the Scottish Executive should exert considerable pressure. I sincerely hope that it is doing so.
Until the Executive's pressure bears fruit, enforcement of the code of practice—some way of ensuring that the pot of money that is available throughout the chain is evenly spread—is important. It cannot be right that the producer of a litre of milk should receive 17p or 18p, when the retailer gets 45p or 50p and it costs at least 20p to produce the milk in the first place. It certainly cannot be right that fear of being delisted by the supermarkets prevents complaints by producers. If an enforcer could change that, we would support it. If legal back-up or strengthening were required as a last resort, we would support that, too. Something drastic needs to be done when 200 to 300 cow herds are packing up in my constituency—I am talking about modern and efficient units in a producer-friendly arena. That is a serious situation, and serious situations demand serious action.
We do not accept that all supermarkets have a negative impact or that all have a positive one, but we believe that they could do much more to present a positive image—a point on which my colleagues will expand later. As has been mentioned, they could source more local produce. Better and clearer labelling is important. We could encourage farmers' markets to expand the choice that is available. Above all, we could ensure that our primary producers are consistently paid a fair share of the overall moneys that are available for their product, whatever it may be. The goal must be fair shares for all. It is a tragedy that we have to call for that in the first place. Doing something about it is a different matter.
I move amendment S2M-2056.2, to leave out from "negative" to end and insert,
"impact that the dominance of supermarkets can have on Scottish farmers, producers and communities; notes the Office of Fair Trading's report that fear among suppliers of being delisted by the major supermarkets is preventing them from complaining under the current Supermarket Code of Practice; calls for an independent overseer of the code of practice who will proactively ensure that it is enforced and who will protect complainants from reprisals, and further calls for the code of practice to apply to the whole food supply chain in order to ensure fair trade for all, with particular emphasis on ensuring that the primary producer receives a fair reward for his or her product."
I was, as a committed vegetarian since the mid-1980s, looking forward to the debate. I thought that we would have a serious debate about healthy food, its production and its distribution. Food matters, for all sorts of reasons that I will explore later, so I was pleased when I heard that the Greens intended to devote some of their time to debating it. However, their motion does nothing of the sort—it addresses matters that are expressly reserved to Westminster, but nothing else. I regret that the Green party, which shares many Labour values, has chosen to abandon the constructive approach that Robin Harper took during the previous session of Parliament. On this occasion, it has lodged a motion that offers little insight and no solutions and that addresses reserved matters, rather than issues over which we have control.
Will the member give way?
No—I want first to make some progress. The devolution settlement is supported by a majority of Scots. Some members may have difficulty accepting that, but it is the established will.
Now that I have got that off my chest, I will return to food. There is little in the Greens' pamphlet "Join the food revolution …" with which I disagree. It is a little simplistic in places, but I share many of the pamphlet's sentiments. We are all in favour of providing schoolchildren with healthy meals. That is why the Executive published a set of nutritional standards for school lunches and has invested more than £55 million in the hungry for success initiative.
We are all in favour of reducing food miles. That is why the partnership agreement says explicitly:
"We will encourage localised food distribution systems involving more local processing of produce."
In the next paragraph, it states:
"We will support local marketing schemes, with clear accreditation and labelling of local produce to increase consumers' power to identify and choose Scottish produce. We will work with supermarkets and farming representatives to encourage greater sourcing and clear labelling of local food items and food produced by organic and sustainable farming methods such as LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming)."
The member said that the Executive has pledged to work with the supermarkets. Can he provide us with information on what has happened to fulfil that pledge?
I was quoting from the partnership agreement, which states clearly that it is the Executive's intention to work both with producers and with suppliers of food. That is the genesis of the debate that we are having. Alex Fergusson spoke about the balance that must be struck between those who produce our food and those who sell it.
As a Unison member—for the avoidance of doubt, I declare an interest—I am all in favour of the union's food for good charter, and thank the Green party for its support of the charter.
Unlike our opponents, Labour has a good record on food and agriculture. The wax-jacket brigade to my right likes to paint itself as the farmer's friend, but I am not sure that we should take any lectures from the party that brought us BSE, that had our beef banned the world over and that presided over the salmonella in eggs fiasco. It wants to perform the same trick again, this time by playing fast and loose with amnesic shellfish poisoning to ruin our shellfish industry. The Tories and the SNP would destroy our fishing industry by ignoring the simple fact that with no fish there would be no industry. I pay tribute to Robin Harper's consistent support of the Executive on that matter.
After noting the substance of Shiona Baird's motion, I confess that I am puzzled as to why the Green party thought that it was a good idea to throw away its debating time on competition law—a matter that is reserved to Westminster—and why it wants to pre-empt the Office of Fair Trading's audit of the supermarket code of practice.
I know that the Greens might not have a lot of constituency casework, but they seem to have got carried away with trying to keep themselves occupied. Rather than concentrate on what the people of Scotland elected members of the Scottish Parliament to do, they have got caught up in their own rhetoric and presented it to Parliament as a considered view. The Greens cannot reasonably complain about the Executive's record of action on food and agriculture, which the minister outlined earlier, because they agree with most of it. They cannot bring themselves to say how they would use Parliament's powers to improve the health of Scotland's people and its food industry. If their motion—on entirely reserved matters—is an argument for more powers for the Scottish Parliament or for independence, which the Greens say they support, it is pretty thin gruel.
As the Greens should know by now, the Office of Fair Trading is currently carrying out an independent audit of the supermarket code of practice. The audit is to see what, if any, substance there is in the complaints that the Greens present as fact. Those of us on the Labour benches think that it would be a better idea to wait until the audit is complete before reaching a firm conclusion. However, on today's evidence, the Greens are never ones to let the facts get in their way.
In their search for baddies, the Greens have chosen to launch an attack on supermarkets without taking the trouble to read fully what the Competition Commission report has to say on the matter. The Green motion states:
"supermarkets also have significant power to control and lower prices being paid to Scottish producers but fail to translate this into lower prices for consumers".
The Competition Commission states:
"We were satisfied that cost reductions at the farm gate had either been passed through to retail prices or, where they had not, that there had been cost increases elsewhere in the supply chain."
The Competition Commission found no evidence of excessive profiteering by supermarkets, nor any evidence that unreasonably high prices were being charged. The Greens might have more confidence in their anti-business prejudice than in the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading, but I do not think that the rest of Parliament does.
The Executive and the UK Government at Westminster have taken a clear lead in safeguarding our food and improving the nation's economy and health. The Greens have a well-intentioned and generally sensible food policy; it is just a pity that they had so little confidence in it that they chose to lodge such a poor motion for debate today.
I begin by challenging the notions that all is well in our food chain and, indeed, that all the Executive work to which Scott Barrie referred is having the effect that he suggests.
The impact of supermarket growth has been profound. The Scottish Retail Consortium—from which all members have heard in the past day or two—claims that supermarkets ensure permanent access to food for all members of society. Why, in that case, does food poverty continue to exist in Scotland? Why, if the takeover by the big four supermarkets of over three quarters of our food retail has been a positive development, do an average of 5,000 people in every parliamentary constituency in the UK suffer from food poverty? Why do 40 per cent of people admitted to hospital show signs of malnutrition? Why is a healthy diet out of reach for millions in a rich country like ours? It is because the disproportionate power of the big four retailers has allowed them to change and distort our food chain, our food culture, and even our physical communities, to suit their own ends and to satisfy the demands of shareholders at the expense of producers, consumers, communities and the environment.
Is the member saying seriously that, by abolishing big supermarkets, people who live in the most deprived communities that we represent would have more access to cheap and healthy food than they do at the moment? I suspect that that is not the case.
I take the point and refer the member to a comment that one of our Scottish Socialist Party colleagues made in the most recent election. On being asked whether the party wanted to nationalise Tesco, Tommy Sheridan answered with a wry smile, and perhaps a joke, "Not yet."
We do not want to nationalise or abolish; we want to reduce the power and the dominance of the supermarkets. We want to put supermarkets back to where people wanted them in the first place—as part of a healthy and diverse mix of retail.
Food poverty is not just about the price of a loaf of bread or tin of beans. It is obvious to anyone that supermarkets can offer incredibly cheap deals on a few product lines if and when they choose to. However, their immense marketing muscle is always geared towards pushing highly processed products which, as well as being dubious on health grounds, makes it difficult to judge value for money. The reality is that most of those products are wildly more expensive than the cost of their ingredients.
There is also the cost of getting to the supermarket in the first place. When people have lost the option of buying locally, they travel hundreds of miles every year to do their shopping. That brings additional costs to those on low incomes who are unable to shop locally.
As Mark Ballard articulated earlier—only to be ignored by Mr Finnie—communities that oppose the growth of supermarkets, even communities that are oversupplied by supermarkets, cannot do so easily. The minister, in the finest tradition of the Scottish Executive silo mentality, dismissed that point as a planning matter. The role of the planning system is a central part of the story of the development—or, rather, overdevelopment—of supermarkets and until we redress the balance in the planning system in favour of communities, that will continue to be a problem.
Supermarkets can increase in size, build more parking spaces and open new stores with ease. Small shops cannot. Indeed, when small shops try to develop, they are hit with rates increases and when they try to attract shoppers, they know that those shoppers are comparing free parking at the supermarket with charged parking on the high street. The Executive's reform of the planning system must ensure that the wishes of communities are represented in the system that currently ignores them.
It is sad that many members who have spoken in today's debate are under the impression that buying three quarters of our groceries from four companies is the only way we can live. They argue that only big global supermarkets can offer the range of foods that people want to buy these days. That is nonsense—only supermarkets have the buying power that allows them to dominate markets. If that power were distributed more fairly and exercised more locally, demand for those products would still exist, there would still be those who wanted to meet that demand, exotic foods would not go out of fashion and it is likely that they would be traded more fairly. It is also likely that the products that we produce here would be sold here rather than our simultaneously importing and exporting vast quantities of the same stuff.
Only supermarkets—so the argument goes—can offer all the extra services that are developed alongside them. That is nonsense, too. Only supermarkets are being given the opportunity to develop in those ways. If someone runs one of the last handful of independent shops in their local high street, developing new services is not easily done because they are concerned with immediate survival. Every time a neighbour shuts up shop, the range of goods and services that draws people to the high street is diminished. If the butcher goes, the baker suffers. If the bank branch closes, the dry cleaner has to worry. However, a thriving locally owned retail cluster can develop co-operatively, even to the point of offering online ordering, combined home delivery schemes, child care while people shop and all the other attractive extras.
Some people would argue that to return to local food systems would be a backward step and that we cannot go backwards. I say that if we have made the wrong turn, if we have come the wrong way and if we look up and realise that we are heading in the wrong direction, we should turn back. I do not suggest that we turn back the clock, but we want recognition that the course of our food culture is heading in the wrong direction and we must turn it back. If we look down south, we see that the trend is several years more advanced than it is up here. It is years again more advanced in the United States. Do we want to head in that direction? If we want to end food poverty, to have a healthy diet for all and to have a healthy local economy for every town and city, it is time to turn back.
The impact of supermarkets on small shops and primary producers is not a topic that has become important in the past few weeks during which it has become the topic of press releases from the Green party; that impact has developed over at least the past three decades. In my constituency—as, I suspect, in all members' constituencies—we have seen predation by supermarkets and its effects on small shops. In my constituency, Nairnites leave to go to Forres supermarkets on one hand and Inverness supermarkets on the other. The impact of that on the high street has been inexorable, consistent, persistent and has happened over a matter of decades.
We all agree about that, but we disagree in at least two respects. First, the alleged solution that has been proposed by the Green party would be completely ineffective. The Greens call for
"an independent overseer of the code of practice who will proactively ensure that it is enforced"—
a sort of Rambo of the protection world, or an Arnie Schwarzenegger who would arrive on the scene to protect primary producers and small shops from supermarkets. The idea belongs in the realms of fantasy.
Will the member give way?
Will the member give way?
Will the member give way?
Will the member give way?
This seems to be a good point at which to give way.
Mark Ruskell—no, Patrick Harvie will intervene.
Does the member seriously suggest that such a massive industry should operate without an independent regulator? If he is not suggesting that, what would be the regulator's role in enforcing the code of conduct?
I suggest to Mr Harvie and his colleagues that the thoughtful, helpful and practical suggestions that are made in the NFUS briefing are a good read. We all agree that some of those suggestions should be adopted. However, the Government has a role to play and other measures to tackle the effects of supermarkets should at least be seriously considered.
First, bargaining strength is notoriously unequal. Since the Tories in their wisdom decided to abolish the milk marketing boards there has been an absence of collective bargaining strength on the part of the dairy sector. Without that strength, it is difficult to envisage how a legislative solution could be effective. Secondly, as Richard Lochhead said, the Government does not seem to have used its influence, which is huge. I refer to the Government's ability not necessarily to make legislation or to amend the regulatory regime—as the Greens propose—but simply to state that enough is enough and that farmers must get a better deal. If the Prime Minister decided to depart from his usual topics of the day and devote attention to the matter, Tesco et al would listen.
Our devolved powers could be used to address supermarkets' rateable values and to shift the burden of business rates from the small shop in the high street to Tesco in the business park outwith the town. I have corresponded with rates assessors on the matter and the Executive has the power to do that.
The Greens decided to debate food, so I would be interested to know whether they have come to a view on matters about which I sent an e-mail to Shiona Baird on 25 February. That e-mail followed disgraceful and false stories that a report sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts put about in relation to the salmon industry. The research was shown to be bogus and Scottish Quality Salmon helpfully provided us with the facts and the truth. Ms Baird attended a meeting at which I suggested a way of helping to promote salmon as a vital part of a nutritious diet, which is of particular value in the cognitive development of the unborn child—
Will the member give way?
The member will get her chance.
I suggested that it would be useful if a representative of each political party agreed to participate in a photocall, at which we would eat farmed salmon and show that we acknowledge salmon to be a valuable part of our diet. However, Ms Baird did not respond to my e-mail that asked the Scottish Green Party to participate. The Greens did not say, "Yes; not only is salmon safe to eat but it is a valuable part of our diet." The Greens did not acknowledge that the FSA suggests that two portions of oily fish per week should be eaten as part of a healthy diet. I wait for the Greens to make those statements. If the Greens want to pose in the role of the farmers' protectors, I suggest that they start by having clear and unequivocal policies.
I recollect that at the meeting that Fergus Ewing mentions considerable concern was expressed about the number of fish farms that are not engaged in quality control. I do not quite remember the figure, but the number is very high. Does the member agree that that is a major problem?
Ms Baird decided not to answer my e-mail of 25 February. Farmed salmon is an essential part of a nutritious diet and it would be helpful if the Scottish Green Party would say that. Apparently it will not do so even now.
For the Greens to cast themselves in the role of farmers' friends seems to be a spectacular example of political miscasting. It is like asking Norman Wisdom to play Dirty Harry, or Arnold Schwarzenegger to play Mozart. The Greens are good in their new role as blatant populists—
Will the member give way?
No. The member is well over time.
The Greens have espoused the grey politics that they said that they would eschew and the yellow politics that we heard from Allan Wilson yesterday, because they are afraid to come off the fence and give a clear view and a serious policy on food or virtually anything else.
I have sympathy with the emotion behind the Scottish Green Party motion. Like other members, I agree that there are serious issues to be debated. The Scottish Parliament has the power and competence to take action on many of those issues and it would have been preferable if the motion had addressed them. However, the motion does not do so, so I cannot support it.
The motion takes no account of the reality of consumer choice or the demand created by global communications and faster transport. It almost harks back to a woolly, baa-lamb, bucolic utopia, which I do not recall ever having existed. As a child in rural County Dublin in the 1950s, I recall that at this time of year we would eat boiled, stewed or roast beef, pork or mutton, local fish—assuming it was there to be caught—potatoes, carrots, cabbage, turnips and leeks.
Will the member give way?
I ask the member to give me a minute.
We used to have apples for pudding, because they were available at this time of year. By the time I did a catering management course in the mid-60s not much had changed in relation to the availability of what we now accept as standard fare and think that we have the right to demand, not just for ourselves but for our communities. Kate Maclean mentioned the choice that is available to her constituents. It is right that our constituents should have that choice and that it should be delivered as fairly as possible—I will return to that point.
I also recall the health effects of poor food hygiene and handling processes. Nobody dies of botulism any more—at least, there are only isolated cases. The incidence of tuberculosis transferring from cattle to humans is mercifully rare, although I am aware that the incidence of TB from other sources is increasing.
I welcome the variety in our diet that we now enjoy.
Will the member give way?
I will just finish my point.
In the mid-60s I made a Hungarian goulash for the first time and served it to my family. My Dad looked at it and declared that the wallpaper that had just gone up in our hall looked better than the goulash. He asked to be served plain food and no more foreign muck.
The industry gives access to a wide range of safe food all year round.
Does the member accept that although diseases from poor hygiene have decreased, obesity and related conditions such as type 2 diabetes have increased hugely? Does she accept that we face a ticking time bomb of diseases that are directly related to our nutritional practices and food culture?
I am pleased that the member makes that point. I agree with her and I ask her to acknowledge that the Executive has control over and is taking action on those matters.
The total retail market for groceries in the UK is £115 billion per annum. The proportion of household income that is spent on groceries is 13.4 per cent and has decreased since my childhood. The sector employs 12 per cent of the Scottish work force. I want to concentrate on employment.
In the 1950s, wages were far lower than they are today. Nowadays our standard of living is far better and the amount of money that we have to spend is far greater than was the case then. However, food prices were much higher in the 1950s, because we had just come out of the war. There was no cheap food policy in those days either—
Quickly, please.
Does Christine May agree that it not possible to make comparisons between food prices or the proportion of income that is spent on food now and the position in the 1950s? Those comparisons have no relevance.
I do not agree with Robin Harper. I am not speaking in the debate in order to talk about proportions of income; I simply highlighted the issue as an example of why the food industry is an important part of our economy.
The food industry is important for our farmers in the range of products that they produce. It is also important for biodiversity—my colleague Scott Barrie referred to the LEAF programme in that respect. Local biodiversity action plans, which are supported by the farming community in Fife and across Scotland, are doing wonders for our countryside and for the quality of food that we get.
Other important elements of the food industry are diversification, handling, processing and packaging, transport and logistics—we need only think of our use of the Rosyth ferry link to access European markets—and foreign languages: Kettle Produce in North East Fife, which neighbours my constituency, employs Czech, Spanish, Italian, German and French speakers to deal with the various countries to which the company exports and from which it arranges imports.
Tourism is also important, as is the co-operative movement, which no member has mentioned so far in the debate. The co-operative movement has had a huge effect on fair trade and on the ability of farmers to access markets through their local agricultural co-operatives. In addition, the Co-op builds stores in local communities. The final element that I want to mention is organics, because of the additional choice that that has given us.
The debate is about consumer choice, consumer incomes and dealing with the effects of poor diet. I support Ross Finnie's amendment; I cannot support the motion.
I begin by drawing the attention of members to my entry in the register of members' interests. My entry shows that I am a farmer but, to give more full information, I should say that I am a dairy farmer and am a contracted supplier to Robert Wiseman Dairies.
It is interesting that the Greens should have lodged the motion that we are debating today, given that it relies heavily on much of the information that the NFU Scotland has put to the Parliament through its lobbying in recent weeks and by other means. That said, having heard some of the opening speeches in the debate and some of the comments that members of the Green party have made in their interventions, it seems that they decided to focus the debate on their belief that we should be attacking global capitalism. The Greens are trying to prevent the benefits of free trade from filtering down to the ordinary people who benefit from the existence of supermarkets. People use supermarkets because they provide quality at competitive prices. Supermarkets also allow people to spend a much smaller proportion of their income on food than was the case in the past.
For example, the town of Arbroath in the north-east of Scotland has only one supermarket at the moment to serve a population of about 25,000 people. Several applications have been made to build another supermarket in the town—indeed, quite some competition has emerged to get permission to do that. The consistent view of the people of Arbroath and the surrounding area is that they want another supermarket, because they want competition in the retail sector in the town. They do not want to have to go out of the town to benefit from cheap supermarket food, which is a benefit that is acquired through competition.
Although I believe that supermarkets serve an important purpose in the production of cheap food, I also agree that there is a problem with them. In that regard, I turn to Fergus Ewing's remarks about the abolition of the milk marketing boards. Given that he does not have my experience of going through that process, I remind him that undertaking collective bargaining on behalf of the farmer was not one of the roles of the supermarket, whereas the role of the milk marketing boards was to set a price that was acceptable to processors and buyers. Ultimately, their role was to guarantee the survival of the farmer, but they had to do that at the same time as guaranteeing that the price of milk was kept down.
As a result, in the early 1990s, a lot of pressure was put on the Government to end the regulatory process and allow the market to deliver a fairer return. I can vouch for the fact that, after the milk marketing boards were abolished in the autumn of 1994, milk prices rose—not by a little but by a lot. In my experience, the price of milk rose by 22 per cent to a peak in early 1997. That rise in price was the benefit that came from releasing milk production from the regulatory process. However, those who bought milk were not subject to the same regulation as those who sold it. Consequently, the opportunity was taken more recently to manipulate the process through which milk passes before it is sold to the consumer. At the end of the day, the process has ensured that too much of the profit lands in the hands of the retailer and not nearly enough in the hands of those who are lower down the process.
If we are to follow the terms of the motion in this debate about supermarkets, I agree that we have to talk about regulation and competition, but therein lies the problem: we need to ensure that we have a regulatory environment that allows fair competition across the board, which means that those who produce milk in Scotland need to act for their own benefit. Action is happening in that respect—I refer to the attempt to integrate the interests of co-operatives and those of the processors that is under way as a result of First Milk Ltd taking a shareholding in Robert Wiseman Dairies. In a small country such as Scotland, we can never afford to believe that one company can actually hold a monopoly. I hope that the link between First Milk and Robert Wiseman Dairies is the start of an integration that will be fruitful in the long term.
Dairy farmers need the support of the minister, who said that his department has had discussions with the Office of Fair Trading. We need to ensure that he makes strong representations on behalf of Scottish dairy farmers and that he takes the opportunity to point out the imbalance that has emerged in the market.
An inquiry was held in the House of Commons into the milk trade. Having looked at the committee report, perhaps through rose-coloured spectacles, I feel that the wool was pulled over committee members' eyes on that occasion. The supermarkets seemed to manage to give the distinct impression that somebody else—and not them—was profiteering.
However, the facts speak for themselves. Milk prices have fallen back from the peak in the mid-1990s to only 17p or 18p a litre, the level that the majority of farmers are being paid today. The margin that is being made by the dairy companies is clearly identifiable, because they publish their profits and the number of litres that they process in a year. It is clear that companies such as Robert Wiseman are making at or just under 2.5p per litre for processing milk.
As a consequence, somebody, somewhere, is soaking up 18 pence of the typical milk price and the only suspects are the supermarkets. If we are not to see a level playing field in competition regulation, we will have to look closely at the implementation of the supermarket code of practice. In the first instance, if it can be enforced through negotiation, it can be made to deliver for farmers.
Quickly, please.
If the code cannot be enforced, we will have to look at more rigorous regulation in the longer term.
Like other colleagues who have spoken in the debate, I too would like to see action on the supermarket code of practice. If we can, we should try to bring some transparency to the trading relationship that exists between processors, farmers and supermarkets. However, even if that happens, it will not solve the fundamental problem that faces the milk industry, which is that the price of milk is below the cost of production.
Resolving the unequal struggle between farmers, processors and supermarkets for a fair share of the retail price will take more than modernisation and making the code of conduct that governs the relationship more transparent. I would like to explore one or two ideas that might resolve some of the problems. As we heard from other speakers, the supermarkets and processors always manage to maintain their margins. In any squeeze on price, it is the guy at the bottom of the chain—the supplier—who always takes the pain. In this case, farmers are forced to accept what is left; the processors and the supermarkets always maintain their profit margin.
How can the primary producers take on the power of the multiples and extract a fair price and a decent return for their efforts? I believe that the answer lies in looking to other countries in Europe and to New Zealand and Australia. They faced the same challenge: some would say that they faced a greater challenge because they have to trade outwith their own countries. In those countries, the primary producers have banded together into co-operatives. They have moved up the value chain, captured the processors' and the middle men's margin and now deal directly with the retailers face to face. It is ironic that Arla Foods, which is one of the biggest milk processors in the United Kingdom—it caused the most recent upset in the marketplace—is a Danish-owned farmers' co-operative. Arla trades here, makes profits from processing Scottish milk and returns them to Danish farmers.
It is also ironic that Irish farmers in the Irish co-operative movement make up a significant slice of the processing industry in the beef market. The margins are returned to Irish co-operative members—farmers in Ireland. We must follow that model in Scotland. Like Alex Johnstone, I support the efforts of First Milk, the producer co-operative, which has taken steps in that direction through its purchase of a 15 per cent stake in Robert Wiseman Dairies, one of the biggest and most profitable processors of milk in the UK.
I know that the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society, which is sponsored by the Scottish Executive, provides support to First Milk on an on-going basis to help it to meet its objective of moving up the value chain and trying to return some of the processors' margin back to the raw milk producers. That objective is not easy to achieve, but nevertheless it is an opportunity that must be seized if we are to put dairy farmers back in a position of strength.
George Lyon talks about getting back the margin from the processors, but he said that the main margin was with the supermarkets. How does he intend to get the margin back from them?
I said that we should take the margin back from the milk processors. Robert Wiseman Dairies revealed at the NFU Scotland presentation several weeks ago that its margin is 2.5p net: 2.5p a litre would go a long way towards solving the problems that the primary producers face today.
The great sadness is that the dairy industry was in a position of strength back in 1992. We had vertically integrated milk co-operatives, such as the Scottish Milk Marketing Board and the English Milk Marketing Board. However—Conservative members seem to forget this and Alex Johnstone rewrote history in his speech—in an act of wilful ideological destruction the Tories dismantled the milk marketing boards and forced farmers to disband the co-ops that the industry is now trying to rebuild. The misfortunes of the dairy industry lie very much at the door of a Tory Government that was intent on ensuring that vertically integrated co-ops could not exist after it dismantled the milk marketing boards.
Is the member aware that when the milk marketing boards were wound up they lost their regulatory function and were allowed to operate in a manner in which they had not been allowed to operate previously? Although it was not compulsory, all milk marketing boards initially chose to operate on the basis on which they had operated previously but without the regulatory function. That is why the price of milk went up rather than down.
Alex Johnstone should examine his memory closely. As he may remember, the Tory Government insisted that the processing sector, which the farmers owned, and the producer side were to be totally separated. They were not allowed, by law, to become vertically integrated after the dismantling of the milk marketing boards. We have heard enough of Alex Johnstone's hypocrisy on the matter.
I will address another measure that would make a difference. I support the calls from Richard Lochhead and other members for the ending of the over-30-months scheme, but only if the chief medical officers support that. Otherwise, we could end up destroying hard-won consumer confidence and the reputation that we have now built in Brussels.
George Lyon will be aware that the Food Standards Agency's advice on the matter was originally issued in July last year and confirmed this year. Why, after almost 18 months, have the chief medical officers not clarified their position? That delay is completely unreasonable and it has not been explained.
I agree that there has been an unreasonable delay. I cannot speak for the chief medical officers and the doubts that they might have over the proposals put forward by the Food Standards Agency, but if politicians were to over-ride the chief medical officers and end the scheme while the chief medical officers were still being publicly quoted as saying that there was a risk, I have no doubt that we would destroy the consumer confidence that we have worked so hard to regain. I ask Fergus Ewing to support that point of view.
The Greens have tried to pretend today that they are cuddly, nice people who are concerned only with protecting our environment. The reality is that they are anti-business and anti-consumer choice. There is precious little to choose between them and the Scottish Socialist Party in these matters.
I am sure that the Greens will be chuffed with George Lyon's last comment.
I welcome this debate on food. Food is one of the central issues of our age because it occupies a fundamental position in people's lives. Regardless of age, income, social standing, culture or religious belief every individual has to eat and therefore has a stake in where food comes from and how it is produced. A debate is raging on the health issues and on many other issues related to food. Provision of local food in Scotland impacts on four main policy areas: the economy, the environment, communities and health.
A change has taken place over the past decade. The supermarkets have moved in, but the idea of a local food sector has gained momentum and credibility. Food initiatives have developed all over Scotland and research shows that those have had wide-ranging and long-term benefits, especially for health. We cannot have a debate on food without linking it immediately to health—I will not speak about health, but the two matters are closely linked. Access to and the availability of fresh fruit and vegetables have for some time been recognised as key components of health strategies. A number of initiatives such as community cafes and food co-operatives have been supported and funded by the Health Department.
The issue is complicated. I support the Greens' motion, but Kate Maclean was right to say that closing down a local supermarket in a deprived area would not give people better access to cheap, healthy food. That is not a solution or a way forward. However, I ask whether members have ever bought Tesco basic beans? God knows what is in them. There is an issue of quality as well as of price. Tesco will be chuffed about this, but its basic range is the slurry and the sludge—there is no question about that. However, it is cheap, costing 9p or 12p a tin.
Closing down the local supermarket is not the answer, so what would enable us to challenge the supermarkets and break the hold that they have on the market, particularly given that most people in Scotland earn less than £25,000 a year? I would like to see the development of local produce. I have been looking at the retail end of the co-operatives, but the points that George Lyon makes about producers being involved in co-operatives are valid. There is an opportunity, as the Executive is considering the creation of a co-operative development agency in addition to Scottish Enterprise. I would like such an agency to be created as part of a coherent strategy on the issue of local food to encourage co-ops at producer level and at retail level. As Christine May said, that is not a new idea—this is the third time that I have ended up agreeing with her in a debate.
My ex-comrades in the Labour Party who claim a history with the co-operative movement should relearn the lessons of that movement. People who were in the socialist movement were much more visionary than are some people in the Labour Party today. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; the co-operative movement has already shown that it works. It was successful and competed with other suppliers, delivering cheap, healthy goods to working-class communities throughout Britain. We should consider setting up and funding such co-operatives. Ross Finnie's department agrees that that is important. It already has a number of measures to support agri-food marketing initiatives, including the processing and marketing grant scheme, and it also supports food producers. There are a number of other measures, but those measures are timid and do not go far enough—the situation is like that of David versus Goliath.
There is significant scope to increase the uptake of food from local producers, but that will not happen through the supermarkets. I agree with the call for regulation in the Greens' motion. Why should we not have regulation? The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets regulates electricity prices. We regulate telecoms prices and a lot of other prices. Why should we not regulate agreements between supermarkets and producers?
Increasing the uptake of local food needs a co-ordinated approach involving, for example, the management of food co-ops, local colleges and social enterprise. Public procurement is important, as Richard Lochhead said. When Finnish school teachers came to Scotland to discuss free school meals, they told us that they secured their fruit and berries through public procurement, which encouraged and built on the local produce sector. We should go in that direction. In my opinion, a Bernard Matthews turkey drummer should never get anywhere near a school-dinner plate in this country.
My last point is for the Tories. The drive internationally is for fair trade. The drive of the World Trade Organisation is to bring down barriers and bring in cheap produce from other countries, but loads of problems are associated with that approach. The big multinationals are running riot. In the 21st century, farming is going to become like the mining industry in the 1980s. We closed down all the mines, and the private companies that supply electricity now import coal from Poland. Without the common agricultural policy subsidy, farming would go to the wall in the face of international competition, and that is what will happen if current policies continue and if the supermarkets are allowed to run riot. Far be it from me to have sympathy for the Tories, but they do not have a policy to solve the problem.
I declare an interest as a sponsored member of the Co-operative Party.
I support the amendment in the name of Ross Finnie and welcome the debate. I agree with every member who has said that food is an important topic. Like Christine May, I am old enough to remember what it was like to live in a community without supermarkets in the 1950s. Competition among supermarkets undoubtedly has made food much more affordable than it was in those days, and choice is much greater.
I remember my mother trundling home heavy bags of food that did not come from supermarkets to feed a family of four. Compare that with the bus services that some supermarkets provide specifically to help villagers from our most remote and poorest areas. I do not like my memory of those days, when my mother and many other women were worn out before their time because of the menial tasks and hardship that they faced.
I remind Helen Eadie that in my speech I specifically said that we are not asking to turn the clock back to a time before any of the advantages of modern society existed. We are asking for a re-evaluation of what the dominance of the big four retailers is doing to many aspects of our lives. I hope that she will address that.
The point was well made by Scott Barrie when he referred to the report on competition law that was prepared at Westminster. The Greens are using time here that ought to be used by politicians at Westminster to consider the issues.
We should examine what the Labour Party and Labour-led councils have done throughout the United Kingdom, but in Scotland in particular. One of the first things that our Executive did when it came into being was to ensure that food in hospitals was prepared in-house, so that cook-chill food no longer travelled vast distances from Wales and other places. That is one example of a good initiative.
We should examine what local authorities have done throughout the United Kingdom. Communities that had poor access to grocery provision established their own food co-operatives on a not-for-profit basis to provide people with a local source of food. One such scheme for community food co-operatives is run by the Co-operative Wholesale Society. Co-ops can be established at various levels, from a community fruit-and-vegetable service consisting of a mobile trolley to a full-time community store.
In the past, local authorities in Strathclyde, Fife and throughout Scotland financed, encouraged and promoted such schemes in their areas, so they are not new. I say to Frances Curran that that has not been just a socialist vision for years, as we have had that same vision in the Labour Party. We will constantly fight to establish food co-operatives because we know that they are right and that they are good for local communities. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation supported a study conducted by researchers from King's College London that showed that such community initiatives are good because they address a range of issues, such as social inclusion, involve local people and assist them to develop and gain skills that they might not develop or gain otherwise.
Finally, I contrast our situation with that in Europe. We need to debate the size of our supermarkets and examine what other member states have done, but everything that we do should be driven by what our people want—we should not simply listen to what is happening elsewhere.
In an effort to protect town and district centres, many European Community member states have adopted planning or retail licensing legislation that is similar in emphasis to national planning policy guideline 6 and its Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish equivalents. Out-of-town development has been restricted in Italy through the use of licensing laws that are administered by town and regional authorities, while the requirement in Spain for a licence from a local authority has led to non-uniform superstore development throughout the country. The 1981 ministerial general policy directive in Ireland, which limited the number of new shopping centres, is thought to have stemmed the increase in the number of new supermarkets and helped the independent food retail sector.
Let me cite other recent pieces of legislation. In 1993, France and Portugal enforced a moratorium on all out-of-town hypermarkets and shopping centres in defence of smaller traders. In France, a public inquiry is necessary before permission can be given for any retail outlet of more than 6,000m2. Also in France, the provisions of the 1973 loi Royer, which enabled local authorities to veto supermarket developments of more than 1,000m2 or 1,500m2 depending on local population, were extended in 1996 by the loi Raffarin, which provided local authorities with a veto on developments of more than 300m2. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who sponsored the new law as Minister for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Trade and Small-Scale Industry, commented on its increased restrictions in January 1997:
"It is true that we must be more attentive towards the development of town centres. We want to re-adjust the commercial landscape in (the small shopkeeper's) favour in order to defend the value of commerce as an element of social and economic cohesion".
We need to bear all that in mind, but the bottom line has to be what is most advantageous for our local people and our shoppers. We must stop ignoring their wishes.
We have heard how the supermarkets have a devastating social, environmental and economic effect. Against that, we have the virtues of competition and the 3p tin of baked beans. The argument is not new. I remind people of what John Ruskin wrote in the 19th century about what happens:
"whenever we buy, or try to buy, cheap goods—goods offered at a price which we know cannot be remunerative for the labour involved in them. Whenever we buy such goods, remember we are stealing somebody's labour. Don't let us mince the matter. I say, in plain Saxon, STEALING—taking from him the proper reward of his work, and putting it into our own pocket. You know well enough that the thing could not have been offered you at that price, unless distress of some kind had forced the producer to part with it. You take advantage of this distress, and you force as much out of him as you can under the circumstances."
Has the member ever accepted a free offer?
Yes. I have bought milk at a low price, but it was not until I went to the NFUS reception that I realised why milk is so cheap—the reason is that farmers are paid less for the milk than it costs to produce it. That must be challenged; people do not know about the situation, which is why it is important that we have a debate about food. People should realise that the producers—the dairy farmers of Scotland—are being squeezed, while Tesco's profits go up and up. Ultimately, there is no such thing as cheap food; somebody somewhere always pays the price.
I turn to the adverse economic impacts of supermarkets. It is estimated that since the 1940s about 100,000 small local shops have been forced out of business. Ninety pence in every pound that is spent in one of the big supermarket chains leaves the local area, whereas every pound that is spent in a local shop doubles its value to the local economy. Between 1995 and 2000, check-out prices rose by 21 per cent, but farm-gate prices rose by only 2 per cent. The relentless expansion of out-of-town superstores is creating an economic vacuum that is sucking the life out of urban centres and building ghost towns before our very eyes. I referred earlier to Portobello, where a supermarket may be imposed on the local community, which will devastate Portobello High Street.
When confronted with the sad realities, some people say, "So what? That is the market in action," and they talk of Adam Smith's invisible hand, about which the Tories like to remind us. I remind Alex Fergusson that the motion mentions the impact of the "dominance of supermarkets" on
"farmers, independent retailers, high streets, local economies and consumer choice and health".
We should remember that the cumulative effect of individual choices is results that no one desires, such as the decline in rural communities and urban high streets, the growth in traffic congestion—which is caused by lorries travelling from centralised distribution points and the fact that 75 per cent of the people who visit supermarkets go there by car—and the loss of small retail outlets.
The argument should never be closed off by talking about what consumers want, because what some consumers want as food shoppers may not be what we all want as citizens, householders, employees, motorists or pedestrians, or, for that matter, as shoppers for other goods and services. Given the margins with which small shops run, the actions of a small minority in choosing supermarkets lead to the death of small shops and the ending of consumer choice.
Does the member accept that supermarkets such as the Co-op have done a huge amount to bring fairly large town-centre supermarkets back into communities and to set up small supermarkets in more outlying areas?
Yes. We need a diversity of retail outlets, which is what Shiona Baird's motion calls for.
The dominance of supermarkets means that the free market cannot operate or provide diversity. We are approaching the stage at which an almost unregulated monopoly sells us more than 75 per cent of our food. The sector is unregulated largely because Governments, wherever they are, are too scared to take on the power of the supermarkets. Supermarkets offer only the illusion of low price. I have reflected on what Christine May said about her apple puddings. Those apples were likely locally produced and of a local variety—the kind of apples that one cannot get in supermarkets these days because they order centrally and sell single varieties of apples. Because a few varieties of apple dominate in supermarkets, orchards throughout the country are being grubbed up.
We can and must do more to ensure the continued viability of communities, local economies and local food economies. The future of food security in Scotland depends on our taking action now, which is why I support Shiona Baird's motion.
I welcome the debate, if only because it allows us to discuss the important topic of healthy food. I will come to the issue of supermarkets in a moment, but on a slightly frivolous note—we need a bit of frivolity this morning—I was pleased to see that chocolate is now in and cough medicine is out. I am sure that the Greens support that, given some of the trade names of cough medicines.
To return to the real issues, several members attended last week's meeting of the NFUS and dairy farmers, at which concern was raised about supermarket structures. I will return to that important point, but I must point out that it is unfortunate that the Green party's motion seems to criticise every aspect of supermarkets. The first point on which I disagree with the motion is on choice. I accept what is said about choice between shops, but the choice that is provided within supermarkets is possibly their biggest selling point.
Will the member take an intervention?
I was not allowed to intervene earlier, but go on.
I am grateful. Does the member accept that the choice that supermarkets offer is one that is convenient for them to offer, which is why they are not good at providing fresh ingredients such as meat, vegetables and fish and why they want to sell packaged, processed food?
I disagree. Like Christine May, I will return to my childhood—I remember that the range of goods on offer in the corner shop in the village where I grew up was not what the Greens imply. I also remember the cost of the produce in that shop. One aspect that the Greens have not addressed is that, for deprived communities such as those that Kate Maclean talked about, supermarkets can offer fresh, safe food at a reasonable price.
It has been suggested that supermarkets take over a lot of high street trade, but developments in all members' communities are aiming to bring back community shops, such as the one in Gartmore in my constituency. There are also regular farmers markets, such as the one in Stirling and those in more rural areas, and initiatives such as the Stirling Health & Well-being Alliance, which works with deprived communities to show people how to make better use of vegetables and fresh fruit in their cooking.
The member talks about improving community access to shops and about the community shops in her area, but what does she say to people who feel that they are losing their community shops because supermarkets are moving in?
I am not saying that we do not have to consider the balance between supermarkets and local shops, but I am saying that the Greens' portrayal of everything that is wrong about supermarkets is just not true and is completely imbalanced.
Ross Finnie gave many examples of supermarkets using local produce, but Green members have not mentioned that, nor did they mention the ranges of safe organic food in supermarkets.
What does the member say on the issue that we raise about the price that is offered to producers?
That brings me on nicely to dairy farmers and to the meeting that several members attended last week. That issue is a real concern, as is the code of practice, which is obviously not working. After all, since its introduction, none of the complaints that have been made has been taken up.
Members might recall that, last week, Alasdair Morgan asked Ross Finnie a parliamentary question on this very subject. I do not want to take words out of the minister's mouth that he might want to use later, but I should point out that he said in response:
"There is no doubt that there is an enormous sense of disappointment that the code is not being operated properly. The Scottish Executive is taking up the matter to see whether there is another way of working that in conjunction with the industry."
The minister also pointed out that there was a need for
"more vertical integration so that we are less dependent on the raw milk price."—[Official Report, 18 November 2004; c 12053.]
It is not the case that the minister and the Executive are not trying to address the matter. However, I take on board Richard Lochhead's point that the committees and the Executive should get involved in the issue. Certainly most MSPs who attended last week's meeting felt that we have to keep up the pressure.
I am sure that the minister will assure us that, once the OFT report is complete, he will keep us updated about the current position and will work closely with the UK Government on the issue. After all, as my MSP colleagues have pointed out, many of these matters are reserved to Westminster.
I should also point out that the Greens did not mention the issue of freight and the infrastructure by which produce reaches the Scottish market. We could have spent a lot more time discussing the fact that we need to make that a strategic issue. In the end, I feel that, because the Green party's motion is so unbalanced, we should support the Executive amendment.
I will begin by posing a few questions. Instead of going to the fridge in the morning for my milk, should I walk a mile down the road to the field and personally milk the cow, a task for which, having never tried it, I am ill-fitted?
Is there something that the member has not done?
I always start with confessions, because it might get the audience on my side.
Should I drink that milk unpasteurised? Should I really go back to basics and drink the milk from a cow that has not been tuberculin tested? Not even the Greens are suggesting that we roll the clock back that much. I see that my colleagues are also relieved about that.
We all accept that processing food has benefits for public safety and convenience. As a result, I hope that no one in the debate yearns for a return to subsistence farming and only local production and consumption. The world is simply not like that.
That said, we need to have some view of the world that we want before we can decide on the nostrums that will deliver it. I believe that people want one-stop shopping, and we have proven that by going to the places where such shopping is easy. They want decent quality and make discriminating choices both between supermarkets and between supermarkets and other alternatives.
Increasingly, people want year-round availability. When I was a bairn, fruit and vegetables were seasonal, but consumers no longer want such seasonality. They also want convenient products that free up personal time, which is why pre-prepared food dominates so many of our supermarket shelves. In fact, such a concept is not particularly new: the Cornish pasty is a convenience food that the worker used to take to the field. It was designed particularly for that purpose, with a crust that the worker's grubby hand could hold while he ate the rest of it.
Consumers want free parking, but they also want fewer supermarkets. We have to try to resolve the contradictions in what the public want.
The member's Cornish pasty would have been home-made from fresh ingredients. Does the member agree that, in that regard, there would be a significant difference between the nutritional benefits of what is being offered for sale now and those of the food that was eaten then?
I suspect that there were Cornish pasties that could poison people and Cornish pasties that would be excellent for them. There is merit in having consistency in delivered products and a processing system that supports public safety. That said, the supermarkets are not free from criticism.
Although supermarkets dominate the market, the biggest buyer is the Government. As Richard Lochhead has advocated in the SNP amendment, the Government not only has a role in drawing the supermarkets into a debate in the hope that we might bang heads together for the benefit of consumers, producers and our communities but should be doing more to support our primary producers.
In that respect, I make no apology for returning to the subject of pork. Although our welfare standards for pork production are incredibly high, standards in the rest of the EU—the free market within which we operate—are not so high. What happens? Because produce is cheaper in other countries, the Government and others buy from there. The Government needs to address that matter.
My constituency contains primary producers and producers of processed foods, both of which are important to my constituents. Indeed, most of the salmon, beef and chicken in supermarkets comes from factories in my constituency. It is a shame that people cannot always tell that that is the case. One would have to know the three-digit code on a Tesco label that identifies the supplier. I hope that, when the Government speaks to the supermarkets, it persuades them to break the code to let us find out which produce is local.
It would also be worth discussing the issue of transport with the supermarkets. Although the Tesco supermarket in Fraserburgh sells fish that is caught and landed in the north-east, that fish has come via the north-east of England. It does not even use local suppliers.
We have free choice. When I go to my local butcher, John Stewart—I will give him a name check, because he is worth it—he tells me which field the beef has come from. The meat is also cheaper than it is at Tesco. I have—and I make—that choice. However, supermarkets have many advantages, particularly with regard to business rates, and I invite the minister to tell us what he plans to do about that.
I am happy to support Richard Lochhead's amendment.
Those of us of a certain age remember the 1950s and the image of the housewife putting on her coat and hat and picking up her basket to go down to the butcher, the fishmonger, the greengrocer and the baker. It was not that idyllic. We did not have fridges, which meant that the daily shop was a necessity, come rain, hail, sleet or snow. There were heavy shopping bags to carry, shopping took ages, choices were limited and produce was relatively more expensive.
Will the member give way?
I think that Patrick Harvie is simply going to repeat what he said before. I will carry on, because my time is limited.
In 1950, a third of household incomes was spent on food; in 2000, a sixth was spent on it.
The introduction of self-service supermarkets in the 1950s offered speed, choice and convenience. Perhaps it is not entirely a coincidence that the expansion of supermarkets has been paralleled by an increase in female employment.
How food is sourced, distributed and sold has changed. Food is an important part of the economy. For example, in Scotland, the food and drink industry employs 55,000 people and generates £6 billion in sales. It is fiercely competitive; as the Green party's motion points out, three quarters of the UK market has been cornered by four large chains. There is no doubt that those large players have clout and use it, sometimes to the detriment of smaller players and suppliers. Howegarden in my constituency went bust when the buyer for its loose carrots unilaterally and without notice docked the price from 16p a pound to 12p a pound. However, there has been a response to such practices. A code of practice was introduced following the Competition Commission's report in 2000. There is doubt about how effective the code has been. It is limited in its application and has weaknesses, but there has been a response to that—the OFT is carrying out an audit. All that is reserved and our MPs are dealing with it.
I return to Scotland. As other members have said, there are positive elements to supermarkets. If customers did not support them, they would not exist. What is needed is a balance across the retail sector and in communities. We in the Scottish Parliament should be concentrating on what we can do to help to support the food industry in Scotland.
Will the member take an intervention?
I really do not have time. I am sorry.
We should be capitalising on the undoubted advantages that we have. We want to move added value closer to primary producers and stimulate local demand for local produce. A lot of good work is being done through initiatives such as farmers markets and local food networks. Increasingly, outlets for local produce are opening up in the catering sector as well as the retail sector, as our population chooses to eat out more often than ever before and discerning tourists go looking for local food.
Will the member give way?
Yes.
I thank the member for taking an intervention. I clearly have something that Robin Harper does not have.
I remind Nora Radcliffe that she represents one of the most agriculture-dependent constituencies in not just Scotland but the whole of the UK and her constituents would welcome an investigation by the minister into what happens to every pound spent on groceries between the plough and the plate. Would she support such an investigation?
I would indeed. Such an investigation is happening.
I will go back to my script. Public procurement is a huge chunk of the food market and a great deal more can and should be done in that area. Who more than growing children and people battling illness need the benefits of fresh nutritious food? NHS Quality Improvement Scotland's food standard setting is an important step. Mind you, my experience of seeing hospital food when I visited family members in Raigmore hospital and the Edinburgh royal infirmary suggests that there is huge scope for further improvement.
The Executive's support for school meals has been significant and the improvement is probably encouraging schoolchildren to eat their healthy school meals and not skive off to the chipper. We would benefit from there being cookery classes for all children, many of whom do not see fresh food being prepared from raw materials or enjoy the taste of it in their homes. That could provide long-term benefits for children's health and could change their buying patterns when they start to run their own households. As many have said, how consumers exercise their buying power is the real lever in changing retail.
The Scottish community diet project is working away at making it affordable for low-income families to choose fresh food and there are now nearly 500 community food initiatives in operation. A number of speakers have extolled the value of co-operatives and I endorse what has been said: co-operatives offer one way of creating more equal bargaining.
It is disappointing that the Green motion focuses on reserved matters, given that there is much in our remit to support an indigenous industry that has a turnover of £6 billion. Where are the Greens' solutions? It would be nice to have a statutory code of conduct imposed on global multinational businesses with every aspect of their business operations regulated in a green, independent, socialist republic of Scotland, but that ain't going to happen. Let us operate within the realms of the possible, the practical and the helpful and support the Executive amendment.
I will give Mike Rumbles a tight two minutes.
I am astonished at what I have heard from the Green party, with its left-wing, anti-market economy stance. I say to Mark Ballard that many of my constituents in West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine would like to have access to a local supermarket, rather than having to travel 16 miles to Sainsbury's in Aberdeen or the like.
Will the member take an intervention?
No.
In Banchory there is one small supermarket, which was owned by Morrisons until recently but which is now sold, thankfully. Given the lack of supermarkets, Morrisons was able to fleece my constituents on Deeside with its high and unfair prices. Why were there high prices? There was a lack of competition. There is a real need in parts of Scotland for more opportunity and more supermarkets.
I turn to Mark Ballard's sob story about the 3p can of baked beans, which was a ridiculously sad example. That is what is known as a loss leader and it is welcome. It is called the market economy. Are the Greens really saying that we are exploiting farmers from the wealthiest nation on earth—where our baked beans come from? The Greens should get real. They are very much in tune with the Scottish Socialist Party. It is important that the Scottish people are made aware of the Greens' policies in this field.
This morning we have heard a debate of contrasts. We have heard from those who spoke from agricultural experience, such as George Lyon, Alex Johnstone and Alex Fergusson, we have heard from those who reflected on life and the realities of being brought up in 1950s Scotland and Ireland—and we have had a contribution from the Green party.
The motion that the Greens have composed deals exclusively with issues that are not within the competence of this Parliament. That is a regrettable tactic, particularly when we consider Robin Harper's contribution in the first four years of the Parliament.
Will the member take an intervention?
Certainly not.
Scott Barrie ably demonstrated that that parliamentary tactic is exactly the tactic deployed by another party in the chamber. If the Green party has any desire to be taken seriously, it need only consider how the public view the party in question.
Many members have mentioned the organic sector. The UK organic market has increased rapidly in recent years, with growth rates of 30 to 50 per cent. Despite those dramatic increases, organic sales still represent an all-too-small proportion of the total food sector. We all appreciate that it is simply not in the Executive's gift to guarantee that a given amount of land will be in organic production, but we should also consider meaningfully ways to increase production and consumption. We should be looking at how the considerable support that we give farming is spent. Can the money be better spent? Can it be better deployed? Can it be better used to help to produce and market organic produce? At the end of the day, co-operation and partnership among all parts of the organic food chain are required to realise our shared aspirations.
What crofters from my constituency in the Western Isles need is assistance to help them to convert and, within minimal adaptation costs, return to non-intensive crofting techniques that have safeguarded and helped to maintain our pristine environment for generations. They need support to produce organic food and to ensure that they reach a market that has been sensibly developed and which readily buys the fruit of their labours.
The member referred to the crofters in his constituency. Does he agree that a different form of marketing should be employed? Rather than marketing produce as organic, some of the animals should be marketed as free-range, because it is so difficult to become organic. A great deal of the land in the member's constituency is virtually organic already, as are the animals on it.
Consumers are familiar with the concept of free-range eggs, but free-range beef or lamb would be a new concept. The marketplace and consumers widely appreciate the concept of organic produce. The minister demonstrated clearly in his opening speech that the Executive wants the Scottish organic sector to achieve its potential to supply at least 70 per cent of Scottish demand for organic products.
I agree with Alex Fergusson, Sylvia Jackson and Nora Radcliffe, who were all correct to highlight the Greens' simplistic attitude that all supermarkets are bad. That attitude is both simplistic and wrong.
I will share with members the experience and responsible attitude of the Co-op in the Western Isles. It is by far the most dominant retail force in the Western Isles, although Morrisons also has a presence—sadly, I have no interest to declare in that company. The Co-op buys locally produced milk, salmon, bread, oatcakes, beer and other products. It has a good relationship with crofters, from whom it buys organic lamb or beef—call it what you will, the Co-op will buy it. The Co-op also ensures that the produce is labelled as local and organic.
I agree with other members from across the parties who have said that the supermarkets have to do more. Stewart Stevenson made some salient points in that regard. If they buy more goods locally, source goods locally and label goods clearly, everyone will get a fair share.
The Scottish islands make a massive contribution to food production. Scottish salmon represents 40 per cent of all Scottish food exports. In my constituency, the industry produces an estimated £60 million-worth of salmon—a food that was previously found only on the tables of lairds and canny crofters but which is now a nutritious food the is consumed by millions in the UK and beyond. Another worrying departure for me is that I found myself agreeing with what Fergus Ewing said about fish farming and the Pew Charitable Trusts—
Will the member give way?
Certainly not.
Bogus research was provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts and was happily endorsed by the Green party.
Will the member give way?
I certainly will not.
Will the member give way?
Mr Harper, the member is not taking an intervention. You will sit down.
Mr Harper has wasted 15 seconds. Thank you, Presiding Officer.
The Green party is singularly irresponsible with regard to the wonderful product that is salmon. There is not one anti-fish-farming bandwagon that the Green party has not leaped on. It willingly joins the other vultures that circle fish farming and do their best to destroy it.
Supermarkets do not threaten the viability of the villages in the Hebrides that I represent, but the policies of the Green party certainly do.
On scallops, the Green party members—displaying rampant hypocrisy—preen themselves in the chamber although, a year ago, they failed to support a measure that would have supported and protected small inshore fishermen.
Does the member accept that the reason why the Greens, among others, felt that that proposed conservation measure would not be effective was that we thought that it would drive effort inshore, which is what has happened?
You must finish now, Mr Morrison.
The Green party's explanation is as incoherent today as it was a year ago. Members should ignore its ill-thought-out motion and support the amendment in Ross Finnie's name.
I declare an interest as a member of the NFUS. I no longer farm actively but, reflecting on my former life, I listened with interest to some of the fairly inappropriate and uneducated comments that have been made in the chamber today. In my days of producing beef and lamb, I was involved in several co-operative schemes relating to the purchase of raw materials, oil and fuel and to the sale of my produce, which was always of the highest quality. I jumped through all the hoops that were required by the supermarkets and I was quality assured by many organisations whose names have not been mentioned today. We had to work hard and did not necessarily get a price; if we did not meet the quality requirements, we did not get the market. That sense of realism has been absent from today's debate. Of course, consumer interest is always at the base of all that.
The Greens' approach has been muddled. The opening speaker delivered a lecture that was full of gloom and, although she did not go as far as suggesting that everything should be nationalised and closed down, she was not far from doing so. I accept one or two of the points that she made about the changes in the local marketplace and the loss of fresh vegetable shops—that has happened in my local town of Stonehaven, where there is a supermarket. However, I am looking forward to a farmers market starting up in Stonehaven. On Saturday morning, I was at the farmers market in Banchory and saw the shelves cleared in a matter of minutes, which was unbelievable. People will go out and seek choice.
Again, however, we got no solutions from the Greens. All we heard was moaning and groaning as, just like the SNP, the Greens lapsed into a constitutional exercise.
The member's speech is incredible. The Conservatives' amendment reflects the second part of our motion. On the code of conduct, the Conservatives are proposing the same course of action that we are. The member should realise that there is a consensus in the Parliament and that his party and mine are part of that consensus.
I recall that, when Alex Fergusson took the Green party's motion apart earlier, he declined to accept the first part and agreed with the second part. I am talking about the Green party's approach to the debate and the things that one or two of its members have said today. I should say that one or two points that they made were reasonable.
I welcome what Ross Finnie said about the OFT's investigation into the code of practice. I look forward to reviewing that report fully. Everyone in the chamber agrees that there have been a number of problems and that those problems must be approached in a manner that is positive for the consumer and the producer.
Ross Finnie did not go far enough in relation to public procurement. I would like much more effort to be made to purchase locally. Not only is that sensible, but it makes food fresher and minimises the inconvenience involved in taking food halfway around the country and delivering it, not quite as fresh as it was, several days later.
Organic action plans have been mentioned, but we should remember that they relate to a niche market. There is almost no premium for organic produce and there is certainly no premium for organic milk, because there is overproduction in that area.
I agreed with Richard Lochhead's comments about quality, safety, low prices and convenience. That leads me to Alex Fergusson's speech, which dealt with consumer choice. Of course, we are a more affluent nation than we used to be and, with the exception of people in certain areas, we have more disposable income. That was reflected in the comments that, for example, Nora Radcliffe made about convenience and about working women wanting to be able to save time and to spend more quality time with their families.
Vertical integration has been mentioned. I was a member of a co-operative that is now an international pharmaceutical distribution company. The co-operative linked pharmacists with distributors, enabling them to purchase materials, for example, but we found that we could not go all the way internationally without becoming a publicly quoted company because of issues relating to the rules of the marketplace. Nonetheless, there comes a point at which vertical integration can go quite a long way towards solving some of the problems that we have seen.
Alex Fergusson closed by talking about farmers markets, fair prices and fair shares for all. The concept of fair shares for all or a level playing field is important if our agricultural industry is to survive as we know it.
Scott Barrie, too, delivered a lecture, allowing no interventions. He accused us of being off the planet on the issue of amnesic shellfish poisoning. Does he not realise that Executive ministers have accepted our position and have, very nicely, done a U-turn on end-product testing? Perhaps he has to catch up in that regard.
We have not spent enough time on the issue of labelling. People have a right to know what is in their food. Does the 3p can of beans say how much sugar, salt and other ingredients it contains? Proper labelling should say where products come from. We have traceability, but the information is hidden in codes. There should be clarity for the man or woman in the street. In that regard, we have to ensure that schools teach people how to shop for fresh food and how to prepare and serve it to their families.
The Conservatives support the promotion of food clubs, box schemes and farmers markets, particularly in areas where there is little choice or disposable income. Some people in society are not blessed with a lot of affluence and there are people who do not have sufficient education to prevent them from going down the route suggested by the television advert of the day. The Government has a duty to get involved in that regard.
We agree that the over-30-months scheme should be removed. We worry why the chief medical officers have not come up with an answer, but there is no way in which we can deal with the situation without having their support and being aware of their decision. When I used to export meat to Italy, people knew that it was safe.
You must finish now, Mr Davidson.
The moment there is doubt and public confidence is damaged, that is a disaster for everyone. When—
Mr Davidson, you must finish now.
I am on my last sentence. When the Government here dealt with the foot-and-mouth outbreak, it did so on the best advice available. That is exactly what we did with BSE.
That was two sentences.
This debate has allowed us to determine whether the Government in Scotland has taken any part in an attempt to review the role of the big four supermarkets. Undoubtedly, the actions of supermarkets affect the vast majority of people. What is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that the supermarkets operate in a competitive framework that we in Scotland can be happy to sign up to? I know that the matter is reserved, but we need a combined Scottish voice to show that, across all the parties, we are dissatisfied with the voluntary code of practice and want to find a way of making the code statutory.
How do we do that? The NFUS has suggested that the voluntary code should not only cover the supermarkets but be extended to the whole supply chain. Farmers rarely deal directly with the supermarkets, so they are not covered by the code. The code should be extended to include farmers who supply via an intermediary such as a wholesaler or a dairy. That suggests that the way in which the code was drawn up was not all encompassing. We need to revisit the code to ensure that it protects each of the steps in the chain.
Scott Barrie and others have talked about the way in which the Competition Commission has acted. If any members have read Joanna Blythman's book "Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets", they will recognise that the Competition Commission has not been tough enough in dealing with complaints; the few that have been made have drifted away into the sand.
For example, in 1999, the English NFU complained to the Competition Commission about Safeway's demand that producers pay money to join an ethical trading initiative. Has anything changed? Well, Safeway merely said that the scheme was not compulsory and that producers could say if they did not want to take part. The fact is that anyone who puts their head above the parapet knows that they will be blacklisted. That example and many others show that the Competition Commission's control has not worked.
Scott Barrie suggested that the partnership agreement was beginning to tackle such problems, but we have waited through today's debate for the minister or any Labour or Liberal Democrat member to tell us what the Scottish Government is doing. Will we hear something new in the minister's winding-up speech? We have heard nothing new so far.
I have two quotations that sum up the conflicting aspects of the debates. The first is from the Scottish Retail Consortium's briefing, which states:
"Net profit margins across all the supermarket groups have not increased over the past 10 years, with the average operating margin being tighter now than in the 1990's. This is clear evidence of efficiency gains being passed on directly to consumers."
In contrast, the NFUS briefing states:
"Farmers are at the raw end of the deal, and not just on milk. Whether it is milk, meat, fruit or vegetable production, the cut-throat business of winning market-share is driving down prices, with farmers paying the ultimate price."
If that does not describe the crisis that we face because of the lack of control over the big supermarkets and the lack of a Scottish voice to deal with that, I do not know what does. Those contrasting statements illustrate the problem exactly.
Nora Radcliffe told us that the Government is conducting an investigation. We would like to know what that investigation is doing and when we will hear about it—perhaps the minister can tell us what is going on. The SNP's amendment asks the minister to call a summit and to have regular meetings with the supermarkets to express what I believe is the widespread view in the chamber that their practices have to change. That will enable us in Scotland to have a collective voice. If the Government will not be the representative of that collective voice, who will be? The Scottish Executive should speak up.
We have to consider the Government's role, but the consumer's role is important, too. In order to make any progress, we have to make the higher demands that consumers in Europe make of their supermarkets. We must educate people to use their power and to think about the way in which they buy produce. People must recognise that, if they continue to buy convenience food, that will not realise the potential for far healthier food.
The producers have tried to get vertical integration, as George Lyon mentioned. Fergus Ewing asked that the producers be given better bargaining powers. My arguments have shown the need for far more Scottish produce to be processed in Scotland, as the Government's amendment says. However, we need a framework to be put in place to allow that to happen, as the evidence shows that it is not happening at the moment. We demand action. We must have a summit on food immediately so that we can make progress and tell the British Government what Scotland thinks.
The confusion that we all experienced at the outset of the debate has, by and large, not gone away. It is quite extraordinary to make such vague and generalised allegations against the whole of the supermarket industry as the Greens have done. Notwithstanding the fact that no one in the chamber has claimed that the supermarkets are doing everything right or that there are no specific evidence-based issues that require to be examined, the Greens have persisted in condemning and damning everything that the supermarkets do.
Will the minister give way?
I will make my point first.
The Greens make an absolute assertion on the negative impact of the supermarkets on
"farmers, independent retailers, high streets, local economies and consumer choice and health".
There is no qualification to that outright condemnation. Indeed, I listened carefully to what Patrick Harvie said; he told us that supermarkets were responsible for food poverty and malnutrition. I thought that we would get some balance from Mark Ballard, but he made it absolutely clear that he would uproot the supermarkets root and branch.
If the minister goes to the Parliament's website tomorrow and reads what I said, he will see that I was clearly arguing that all is not well with our food chain, that food poverty still exists and that the claim made on behalf of the supermarkets by their mouthpiece that they have ensured access to cheap food for all is simply untrue.
The member is trying to modify his position by way of an intervention when that is not what the Greens' motion says and not what Green members have said throughout the debate, as all other members have recognised.
Richard Lochhead and Rob Gibson proposed a summit. I am not sure quite what that would achieve. As a minister, I make it my job to keep in regular touch with the supermarkets. We should understand that, when the supermarkets talk about consumers and prices, they make it clear that consumers are indicating a resistance to prices going higher just because we think that the prices should be pushed up. Indeed, they make no equivocation about the fact that, if they can access quality produce from other countries, they will do so. Simply calling a summit and telling the supermarkets to act like King Canute will not solve that problem.
In his opening speech for the Labour Party, Scott Barrie said that, according to the partnership agreement, the coalition would speak to the supermarkets. The idea of a summit with the supermarkets, convened by the minister, seems to be a sensible way of doing that. Will the minister explain what communications he has had with the supermarkets about many of the issues on which there is consensus in the chamber? During the past few years, there seem to have been no formal meetings with the supermarkets in Scotland.
That is absolute nonsense. A week after the deal between Safeway and Morrisons was concluded, I had a meeting with Morrisons. During the summer, I met representatives from Sainsbury and Tesco.
I am talking about formal, joint meetings.
I am having those discussions on a regular basis; I constantly talk to people who work for those chains to raise issues of concern about Scottish food. I do not have to call a summit just because the SNP is unaware of what conversations and meetings with individuals can do.
A number of valid points have been raised, dealing with the issues rather than just what is in the motion. Richard Lochhead, Alex Fergusson, David Davidson and others raised the important issue of labelling. We are making much progress at the Scottish and EU levels in relation to primary produce. Labelling of processed food presents a greater difficulty, as members will appreciate, but we are trying to make progress on that, too. We are concerned to ensure that consumers are provided with the labelling to which they are entitled, which should be as comprehensive and as careful as possible.
On the location and growth of supermarkets, I find the Green party slightly patronising in its suggestion that consumers have no voice and that they would rather not go to a supermarket but just end up there by accident. The argument seems to be that consumers leave their local store only because they lose their way or that, although they like the local store's produce, they just want to go elsewhere. That is fatuous nonsense, but we have had to listen to it all morning. The Greens suggest that 80 per cent of the trade takes place in a supermarket because the consumer does not want to go there. Really? Please let us get back to reality.
There has been a lack of evidence. In a very good intervention, Fergus Ewing asked the Greens what they would do about Scottish salmon, but they responded with more of the vague nonsense that we have had all morning, saying that not many people in the industry are quality assured. Given that 90 per cent of Scottish salmon farmers are quality assured, the Greens have no basis for sitting on their hands and refusing to give a direct answer to the question
On the local planning process, we try to ensure that national policy guidelines on locations are applied. On food processing, I wholly agree that we need to encourage the industry in Scotland. That is why we provide food processing and marketing grants. Indeed, the £45 million investment since 2001 has geared £200 million investment and has affected the supermarkets' position. On public procurement, the Scottish Executive is anxious to ensure that we promote the right policies both in organisations that we control directly, such as health and education establishments, and in other agencies.
In summing up, I think that we are back where we started. Every party save the Green party recognises that, provided that we have the evidence, we ought to address certain elements of the way in which the supermarkets operate. However, a blanket condemnation of all that the supermarkets stand for and a patronising attitude towards consumers simply will not wash. I stand by the amendment in my name.
In some ways, the debate has been disappointing, because many members are in denial about the crisis in our food culture.
Christine May claimed that food hygiene has increased over the years, but that belies the health problem that is caused by our diet. Coronary heart disease costs the UK taxpayer £10 billion a year. Obesity costs £2.5 billion a year.
Will the member give way?
No, I will not.
Shiona Baird explained how the consumption of vegetables has reduced by a third since the 1960s. Yes, the SNP is right that public procurement has a role in increasing that consumption—that is why the Greens have championed that policy in the Parliament for the past five years. However, members are in denial about the role of retailing, as if it somehow had no impact on our food consumption. Some 88 per cent of our food is purchased through supermarkets; we have a food health crisis. Understand the link.
Choice has been much discussed, but there are many different aspects to choice. We must understand that, every week, 50 independent retailers across the UK close down. Their margins are being squeezed by the price war that is being conducted by the supermarkets on the edges of our towns and cities.
Let us not be naive. The supermarkets control the way in which we view food from the moment we walk into the store by employing various marketing techniques, such as buy-one-get-one-free promotions and the introduction of bakery aromas at particular points throughout the store. They even alter the beats per minute of the music as we walk around the store to slow us down to look at particular shelves. That is just simple marketing, which has been around for the past 50 years. Why cannot the Parliament see through it?
On price, supermarkets are prepared to use loss leaders such as beans, as Frances Curran mentioned, but they are also quite prepared, as Patrick Harvie pointed out, to pile costs on to processed food, which they then market aggressively. Processed food is high in salt, high in fat and high in sugar. Given the ingredients of such food, it represents bad value for consumers.
Since half past 9 this morning, members in the chamber have been waiting for the Greens to suggest some solutions to the many problems that they keep raising. Can we perhaps hear a solution in the remaining three or four minutes of Mark Ruskell's speech?
I am waiting for George Lyon to support the motion, which, like the one he signed last week, calls for the code of practice to be strengthened. That George Lyon refuses to come out in favour of that is absolutely incredible.
Farmers get paid 17p a litre for milk that costs them 20p a litre to produce, but the supermarkets sell it for 50p. The price difference goes into supermarket profits. I refer George Lyon and Mike Rumbles to some helpful research that was provided by Liberal Democrats at Westminster. Over the past 15 years, supermarket profits have risen by 300 per cent. The salaries of supermarket chief executives have risen by 557 per cent while farm incomes have struggled, rising less than 30 per cent. Andrew George, who is the Lib Dem shadow minister for food, said:
"Someone must be making money here, and it isn't farmers. People are paying more for their food, yet British farmers are not getting their fair share."
I suggest that Mike Rumbles should listen to his colleagues in Westminster and learn from them.
Nobody is saying that supermarkets are evil. However, the supermarkets are dominant. Patrick Harvie has pointed that out throughout today's debate, but few members have been able to bring themselves to support him on that. Face the reality.
Many members have mentioned the limited choice that was available to them as children in the 1950s. I grew up in the 1970s, when there were supermarkets, from which my parents were able to get good-quality food. However, in those days, the supermarkets had links to farmers and local shops. The problem is the dominance that the supermarkets have gained over the past 30 years. That dominance is now skewing our food economies.
Of course supermarkets have a role to play in providing food choice in low-income communities, but let us not forget that many studies, such as the Midlothian food basket study, have shown that supermarkets put up prices in low-income communities because such communities end up with smaller stores that have less food space. How does that bring about the social justice to which the Labour Party, like the Greens, is so wedded?
The impact of the supermarkets on our communities needs to be tackled as a planning issue. I was pleased to hear Helen Eadie mention some solutions that are being pursued elsewhere, but ultimately we cannot dodge the fact that the supermarket code of conduct is failing. The Scottish Parliament might not necessarily have the powers to turn the code of conduct into regulation, but does the minister honestly claim that we cannot lobby for change? Will he not talk to the Westminster Government about the issue?
We need action. We need to ensure that suppliers are not fearful of being delisted by supermarkets if they take up a case under the code of conduct. We need an independent overseer and we need to ensure that the code of conduct applies to the whole food supply chain. Of course there will be fears that such a move might breach EU competition rules, but the same arguments were used against local public procurement just several years ago. Today, we have procurement guidelines both in Scotland and in England and Wales that get round the EU competition laws. Why cannot we do the same on the regulation of supermarkets?
Will the member take an intervention?
I do not have time.
Why not?
I am in my final minute, but I will take an intervention. Make it quick.
Will Mr Ruskell answer the question that his colleague refused to answer earlier? Should Scottish farmed salmon be available for purchase by consumers in supermarkets or anywhere else in Scotland? Yes or no?
I will reserve my judgment on that until I see clear evidence from the Executive on whether contamination of farmed salmon is decreasing year on year. We await those figures from the minister. When we receive them, we will start to answer Mr Ewing's point. The Greens favour a fact-based approach.
Finally, Scott Barrie accused us of refusing to work in consensus. What utter rubbish. Three weeks ago, the Green party lodged a motion that contained much of what is in our motion today and members of all parties signed it. Much of the text of the Tory motion that we supported last week is reflected in today's motion and in the SNP and Tory amendments. There is real consensus that the code of conduct is not working and that action needs to be taken. Members need to support either our motion or one of those two amendments to maintain the consensus in the Parliament.
We need a unified approach to give the minister a mandate to make the case at Westminster for Scottish farmers, which I know is what Liberal Democrat voters want their MSPs to do. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with our farming industry and shoulder to shoulder with the communities that have been affected by supermarkets. We need Executive action. I am still waiting to hear what action the minister will take on the OFT audit. I shall keep waiting.