Supermarkets: Payments to Suppliers

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 2:46 pm on 26 February 2003.

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Photo of Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey Deputy Chief Whip (House of Lords), HM Household, Captain of the Queen's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard (HM Household) (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Lords) 2:46, 26 February 2003

My Lords, I said that a review is about to start. Any subsequent interval will be decided in due course. It is not necessarily a good thing for a review to take place every six months. One of the issues that the review will have to deal with is the reluctance of suppliers to come forward to make complaints. It is a serious matter. That is why the Office of Fair Trading has made it clear that it will accept complaints from suppliers' organisations rather than from individual suppliers, which will be able to make their complaints to those organisations in confidence. That is a significant step forward. It will help the code of practice to work better than perhaps it has done in the past.