Ethical Trading (Hansard, 9 May 2000)

§ Mr. Andrew Rowe (Faversham and Mid-Kent)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require retailers to apply the same standards when purchasing from other countries as they apply when purchasing within the United Kingdom. As you know, Madam Speaker, I am the Member of Parliament for Faversham and Mid-Kent. You may not know that my constituency is alleged to contain the largest acreage of top fruit in the United Kingdom. However, given the speed with which fruit farmers are having to grub up their orchards, I wonder how long that privilege will remain.

The House knows that the farming community is going through an extremely bad time. Small farmers are leaving the business and their way of life at ever-increasing speed and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. A strongly held belief in the farming and horticultural communities is that they are frequently prevented from selling their produce to big retailers in this country because the standards that those retailers impose are relaxed for imports. It is hard to establish whether that strongly held belief is wholly or partly true because the big retailers are cagey about how much information they provide. However, it is clear that there is a good case for ensuring that it is no longer reasonable to hold such a belief so strongly.

My simple Bill proposes that it should be illegal for a major food company to import any food product if it can be shown that it has refused to purchase from a British supplier for reasons of standards and that the standard of the food that has been imported is the same or lower than that which it has refused to buy in Britain. That would make it absolutely clear that a level playing exists across the world and ensure that the big retailers, which have such a stranglehold on the market, behave as ethically as they claim.

One of the origins of my Bill was a session that the parliamentary fruit group held with a representative of one of the large supermarkets. He explained persuasively and at great length how ethically his company behaved and how it used its market power to drive up the standards of their suppliers around the world. However, when he was asked whether it would relax those standards if a product ran short and import it from wherever it could be found, he said, "Ah, that is nothing to do with the company; that is to do with the Government."

My Bill aims to provide the Government with the opportunity, within the law, to allow those retailers to feel secure in the knowledge that they can behave as ethically as they claim to do. That is important, because if we are serious about protecting our children from pesticide residues, or if our consumers are anxious about the 660 standards under which pigs or other livestock are reared, it is essential that they should be as well protected from pesticide residues from Spain or the Caribbean as they are from pesticide residues at home. If the retailers are behaving as well as they claim to be, they can have no objection to my Bill, because it merely reinforces the position as it is alleged to be; but if they are not behaving in that way, the Bill will give much-needed protection to British farmers.

Every Member of Parliament has an interest in ensuring that the share of British food sold by British farmers increases. Many of the difficulties of British farming would diminish greatly if we could obtain a larger share of the domestic market, and the cry for increased subsidy would also diminish greatly if we were obtaining a larger share of our home-grown market.

Many of the difficulties of the farming community are caused by the fact that a large number of big purchasers employ young men and women whose arrogance—backed by the power of their companies—is so great that long-established farmers find it difficult to believe what they are told. They often believe that what is being imported is of a lower standard, to their great detriment.

Let me give an example that featured in the debate on labelling initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien). Chickens from Thailand, having entered this country and been processed in some minor way, are often regarded as British, although as far as anyone can see they contain no British component. They have been shown to contain rather more unwelcome chemicals, or hormones, than they should contain according to British standards. It is that kind of story, multiplied a hundred times, that is causing so much distress in the farming community.

I consider the current state of affairs to be entirely wrong. I believe that my simple little Bill would end it, and I hope very much that the House will allow me to bring it in.