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Dr. Stoate: Not only do purchasers force down prices, but they have told farmers in my constituency that, if they do not like the prices that they are offered, the purchasers
will buy produce from abroad. They do not care about the deprivation and difficulty caused by their forcing down of farm prices for my constituents.
Mr. Martlew: I can give another example. Ten years ago, 68 per cent. of the price of a pint of milk in the supermarket--now it would probably be a litre--went to the farmer. Today, it is only 56 per cent. and the price has probably dropped in real terms. Supermarkets are screwing the suppliers and taking advantage of a monopoly.
Mr. Andrew Love (Edmonton): They are screwing the consumers.
Mr. Martlew: As my hon. Friend says, they are screwing the consumer as well. Considering how much the average family spends in supermarkets, if we can get supermarket pricing policy right, it would be the equivalent of a penny or tuppence off income tax. We should be doing that.
Mr. Gray: If the hon. Gentleman feels that way about milk marketing, why has his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry taken so long to release the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report on Milk Marque?
Mr. Martlew: I was one of those Members of Parliament who opposed the breaking up of the milk marketing boards under the Conservative Government. That Government are to blame for the current situation.
Wal-Mart concerns me. It may be necessary to bring in someone from abroad to break up the cartel, but I have worries about Wal-Mart. It has more than 2,000 stores in America; not one of them is unionised. In fact, some people have been sacked because they tried to form trade unions. I understand that Wal-Mart went to the courts in America to ask for exemption from the minimum wage. I am sure that, in his reply to the debate, my hon. Friend the Minister of State will tell us that, if the company were to try to do that in this country, the Government would not accept it.
Asda is part of the cartel, but it has a good record with its employees. I hope that, in the event of a takeover, Wal-Mart will maintain that good relationship, retain the terms and conditions of the work force and continue to co-operate with the GMB--I know that the union is prepared to work with Wal-Mart. We will not tolerate in this country the sorts of practices that Wal-Mart has followed in the United States.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire):
I am pleased to participate in this important debate. The Liberal Democrat tradition in Supply day debates is to choose the least
Regardless of what one may say about town centres, village shops and the detrimental effects of the supermarket revolution, the truth is that we all use supermarkets. I challenge hon. Members who are present in the Chamber to say that they do not visit supermarkets--or perhaps it is a wife, a husband or a servant in some cases. [Interruption.] There is not a single person in this nation who does not use supermarkets.
For example, 88,000 people in the town of Chippenham go through supermarket checkouts every month--and Chippenham has a population of 30,000. It has three supermarkets, yet 88,000 people visit Safeway alone. Sainsbury and Somerfield presumably have a similar number of customers. [Interruption.] I am glad that I have been able to give the rather dull faces on the Government Benches a little innocent amusement. In order to set the record straight, I make it absolutely clear that I shop at Safeway and Sainsbury in my constituency.
Mr. Gray:
That is precisely my point.
When it comes to environmental issues--the same argument applies to supermarkets as to the use and building of motorways, the cost of road building and traffic congestion--the more self-righteous among us, whom we often find come from the Liberal Democrat Benches, love to claim the moral high ground. They say, "We believe in village shops and we believe in preserving the high street. We decry what has happened with regard to supermarkets across the nation, we decry the motorways that allow people to get to the supermarkets and the construction of parking facilities. We are into bicycles, bobble hats and high streets." The truth is that the Liberal Democrats use supermarkets as much as the rest of us, and they use motorways to get there just like we do. Pretending that, somehow or other, they are cleaner than clean and that we are the bad guys for using those facilities demonstrates how two-faced the Liberal Democrats are.
The truth is that hon. Members on both sides of the House are absolutely determined to do what we can to support our rural areas and village shops--and they are thriving in every village in my constituency that has them. The communities are vibrant and living, and villages that have lost their small shops are poorer as a result. We are all determined to do what we can to support the high streets--or what is left of them. We are doing an enormous amount in Malmesbury in my constituency to ensure that the vibrant high street remains. It would be foolish to suggest that any Member of Parliament from any political party is not committed to that useful aim.
However, that does not mean--as several luddite speeches have suggested--that supermarket shopping is somehow a bad thing. It plainly is not, and the people who voted for us use supermarkets an enormous amount.
As we heard earlier, 86 per cent. of all food shopping is done in supermarkets. The average weekly shop in the United Kingdom is six supermarket bags weighing 84 lb. That represents a significant change in the way in which
we run our lives, and to try to ignore it or to argue that it is a bad thing gives the wrong impression to those who will read our debate later.
Mr. Gibb:
Does my hon. Friend think it odd that the leader of the Liberal party did not oppose the development of a supermarket in his constituency on a site that was of particular interest because it was mentioned in a Thomas Hardy book, yet his spokesman in the Chamber today is antagonistic to all supermarket development?
Mr. Gray:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He points out a curious anomaly in the attitudes of Liberal Democrats across the nation. Earlier, I had occasion to mention the fact that it was Liberal Democrat district councils that allowed superstore developments. The Liberal Democrats are proud of how many district councils they control, and those are the very councils--for example, in my constituency--that allow out-of-town shopping centres, but at the same time give lip service to supporting the high street.
It is interesting to note that although in Newbury the Liberal Democrat district council turned down the application by Vodafone, the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) apparently supports it. The Liberal Democrats are all over the place.
Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park):
I should like to place it on record that not only do I not wear a bobble hat, but the Liberal Democrat-controlled council in my constituency has opposed two major supermarket developments recently because of worries about damage to Richmond town centre. One of those applications was won on appeal--the Government opposed the council's decision.
Mr. Gray:
I apologise, of course, if I slurred the hon. Lady by suggesting that she might wear a bobble hat, a smock or open-toed sandals. I am happy to accept her assurance that she wears none of those things.
The hon. Lady was not in the Chamber earlier when we spoke about Harrogate. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), from her own Benches, denied that an out-of-town shopping centre had been built on a green-field site in Harrogate. Liberal Democrat-controlled Harrogate district council gave planning permission for a Sainsbury supermarket in Rippon and a Morrisons superstore on a green-field site in Harrogate.
In Chippenham, the Liberal Democrat-controlled district council gave planning permission for a Sainsbury and a Safeway. There was no question of going to appeal or of turning down the application and leaving it to the Secretary of State to allow it; the district council was delighted and welcomed the development. However, the Liberal Democrat spokesman in the Chamber bad-mouths supermarkets as though we all hate them. That is not the truth.
The opening remarks from the Liberal Democrats went no way at all to addressing the problems that our town centres face. My experience in my area is that Liberal Democrat policies are responsible for killing off town centres. For example, just outside my constituency in Bath, the Liberal Democrats have introduced sky-high
parking charges, which have led directly to a 7 per cent. slump in trade in Bath. That is an example of Liberal Democrat concern for our town centres.
In Chippenham, a small market town with a few town-centre shops, we have free parking for an hour. I welcome that, as it brings people in from the countryside to shop in the high street. The Liberal Democrats apparently propose to introduce parking charges in Chippenham and suggest that we might have a park-and-ride scheme in a town of 30,000 people. It is all very self-righteous, politically correct Liberal Democratism, but it will kill the high street in Chippenham. I challenge them to say what they would do to support the high streets.
This is an important debate, but so far it has not been characterised by a real desire to address the problems facing us in planning, transport and the other issues associated with supermarkets. The debate has been characterised by attempts to achieve the moral high ground and in a luddite way to express dislike of supermarkets. The Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning, who is sadly not in his place any more, made some outspoken remarks against supermarkets. I should be interested to know, when the Minister of State, Agriculture, Fisheries and Food winds up, whether he uses a supermarket, whether it is an out-of-town supermarket and how he gets there. I would lay pretty good money that he or his wife do use a supermarket. The important thing is not to make party political points, but to deal with the marked change in taste that has occurred across the nation over the past 20 years or so.
When I was a child growing up in Scotland, my mother went down the high street with her shopping bag. She went into two or three different retailers and bought a loaf here and a lump of meat there. My grandfather was a butcher in Coatbridge: he was a small retailer and people went to his shop to buy meat. They do not do so today. They go to the supermarket and buy their 80 lb of shopping in six bags.
We must address these issues, and central to them is the subject of transport. It is not just a question of where to put supermarkets. I suspect that the market is nearing saturation point because of the large number that were built when we were in power--saturation may not be the right word. Most towns are served by supermarkets. A bigger issue is transport. The average customer at Tesco picks up six bags weighing 80 lbs. The only way in which people can shop at a supermarket is by motor car. It is nonsense to suggest that they go by bicycle, as Liberal Democrats would, or by bus.
My constituents who shop in Safeway and Sainsbury all use the car--or have done so up to now. It is apparently the Government's policy to make it more and more difficult for my rural constituents to use their car to go to the supermarket. They have put up petrol prices, which have gone through the roof. More than anyone else, that affects the less well off, the low-wage earners in rural areas, old people and the disabled. The Government are now talking about congestion charging. That would be helpful for a fat cat or a two-Jag Prescott, who would not mind congestion charging because such people could afford the £5 a day to get into central London. However, it would matter to an old person in my constituency who has to get to the supermarket.
Incidentally, I do not know why we need congestion charging if new Labour VIPs are allowed to use bus lanes to get into the city in their Jaguars. That is what road charging and doing away with supermarkets is all about--getting other people off the road so that they can drive quickly through, as the Prime Minister did the other day in the bus lane on the M4. That is the truth about these people who pay lip service to environmental benefits. They want to continue their way of life and what they are doing, and do not want other people to get in the way while they do it.
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