Members of Parliament are adding their voices to the clamour for a supermarket ombudsman.

Jim Dowd MP, the Labour chairman of the all-party small shops group was reported in The Times: “We need an ombudsman so that people can refer complaints to them but also to take a broader view on supermarkets,” he was reported in The Times. “The department of trade and industry is adopting a hands-off approach with supermarkets, but we have regulators for all kinds of industries, so why not for this sector?”

Lib Dem MP Andrew George said: “The OFT seems to be in a trance of perpetual review and inquiry when I believe that the evidence is there.’

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth is calling for a moratorium on supermarkets buying c-stores and a new Office of Fair Trading inquiry into the grocery market, now that the supermarkets have become the biggest operators in the convenience store market too.

C-store representatives fear that the OFT’s call for more evidence of malpractice under the code by May 31 could be a way of shutting out further debate on the issue so that fearful complainants have to either submit written evidence by that date or keep quiet about it for good, The Times reported.

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