Tuesday, June 16, 2009

And Then We Can Bring Back The Corn Laws!

I've just seen the Lib Dem Agriculture spokesman, Tim Farron, on television outlining his party's food policies. The idea is to:

o Ensure farmers and consumers both get a fair price for food by creating a legally binding supermarket code, enforced by a powerful proactive Food Market Regulator.

So the Lib Dems want to empower a quango to raise prices on essentials, in the middle of a recession, in order to protect one relatively small sectional interest. It would also be likely to harm the relatively poor in order to benefit the relatively well off.

7 comments:

JuliaM said...

Thankfully, they are never likely to get the opportunity to put this into practice...

James Higham said...

And while we're at it, we can reintroduce the window tax.

Letters From A Tory said...

Actually, if you crack the monopolistic power of supermarkets when it comes to making their suppliers their bitch, you would probably get far more producers entering the market - which should keep prices down.

Ross said...

"Thankfully, they are never likely to get the opportunity to put this into practice".

True, but in that case why not make even more extravagant promises?

"if you crack the monopolistic power of supermarkets when it comes to making their suppliers their bitch,.".

No single supermarket is powerful enough to force prices down across the whole market and there is no evidence that they collaborate so I doubt that they can pay any more without being undercut.

Stan said...

I shouldn't worry.

Once the global cooling kicks in in earnest(entirely natural - as was the global warming of the 20th century) and we enter a new little ice age, the succession of global crop failures will ensure that anyone who can grow anything at all will get the best price for it.

Mark Wadsworth said...

"Ensure farmers and consumers both get a fair price for food"??

The implication of that is that supermarkets are taking the p***, which, as you point out, does not appear to be the case.

Anonymous said...

Absolutule drivel from Tim Farron which is just about what we've come to expect from this man. How can this guy who has no worthwhile constructive ideas be the Lib Dem environment spokesperson. Scary stuff.