Letter to the Chairman of the Committee
submitted by Tesco Stores Ltd
Thank you for the recent opportunity to give
oral evidence to the International Development Committee on behalf
of Tesco as part of your inquiry into Fair Trade and Development.
As you will be aware, War on Want has since
submitted a memorandum to the Committee and I wanted to take this
opportunity to respond to the points it raises.
upholds the highest standards in sourcing from
developing countries. Fair treatment of workers in our supply
chain is extremely important to us. We demand clear standards
of our suppliers, including that workers are paid a living wage,
do not work excessive hours, that no threats or intimidation are
practiced, and that workers have the freedom of association, the
right to join a union, and the right to collective bargaining.
It is, however, clearly difficult to ensure
that our standards are met by every supplier, in every place,
at every time. That said, we do endeavour to do just that and
part of our control system is a series of independent third party
audits to assess compliance.
Any information that we receive that suggests
our standards are not being adhered to is treated very seriously.
Where we have a specific allegation we put additional audits in
place to make a thorough check. So in the case of the Channel
4 programme where the allegations were specific, we immediately
put in our auditors to the suppliers named. As a matter of fact
they found no basis for the allegations.
Similar allegations had been made by War on
Want which may or may not have been connected. We were unable
to take the same immediate and direct action in this case because
War on Want, whom we have at no point refused to meet, declined
to substantiate their claims by telling us which suppliers their
investigation involved. Nonetheless we extended our audits in
Bangladesh more widely and have no reason to believe that War
on Want's allegations are well founded.
We would, however, be keen to carry out further
audits, if necessary unannounced, if War on Want provide us with
the names of the suppliers involved. We would also be pleased
to discuss with them any practical suggestions they have of improving
our systems.
It is not in our interests to have suppliers
who do not meet their contractual obligations. We of course want
to continue to make a contribution to the economy of Bangladesh,
but we want to do so in accordance with both the spirit and the
letter of the Ethical Trading Initiative.
In terms of the wider point about the failure
of the system of auditing and of ethical codes of practice, as
you will know, recent research from the University of Greenwich
(commissioned by the Department for International Development)
found a range of positive impacts created by the ethical codes
of practice used by UK supermarkets and others. In particular,
researchers found higher wages, greater security of employment,
better housing conditions, and better access to water and amenities
at code-adopting farms. It would be a shame if such positive progress
on the ground were ignored.
Finally, the Committee raised some questions
during the oral evidence session relating to our approach to trade
unions. I have sought to address these in the annex to this letter.
Emma Reynolds
Government Affairs Manager
10 April 2007
| 
