Groceries Supply Code of Practice adjudicator Christine Tacon believes there still exist far too many misconceptions about her position.
For example, Tacon is keen to clarify that her job only applies to the code, which is designed to regulate the relationship between the 10 leading UK supermarkets - who all now employ code compliance officers - and their suppliers, and gives her the power to arbitrate, investigate and fine. She also stresses that she can only work within the code’s remit.
Among her duties is ensuring that retailers pay suppliers on time, and don’t ask suppliers to pay for a listing fee or a more prominent position for their goods in-store.
She admits the code’s guidelines are “nice and woolly”, meaning one of her key powers – fining retailers 1 per cent of UK turnover, which for the largest UK retailer, is about half a billion pounds – may never come to fruition.
Phil Hudson, of the NFU, says that although the organisation is right behind Tacon, the body would rather she was not called upon at all. He adds: “I’d like to think that we can get to that place where suppliers will feel that their first port of call when something is up is actually not to Christine, but to their retailer.”
Tacon is expecting to handle no more than four cases during 2014. She notes: “I think we have got an outstanding industry, and we do not need to drag our industry’s name through the mud, as you might argue some in the electricity and the banking industries have been doing.”
Despite outgoing Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King questioning the point of the adjudicator role, Tacon has found an unlikely ally in one of the UK’s 10 big retailers. Michael Fletcher, trading director at The Co-operative, says: “There is no ambiguity in the code – it makes absolute sense, and it’s the way that I’ve always behaved, the way the teams that I’ve led have always behaved, and it’s the way that The Co-operative will behave.”
Nevertheless, he adds: “Let’s end up in Christine’s office as a very, very last resort. Let’s actually have a conversation, and if you’re disappointed in the response that you get from me, then have a conversation with my boss, and if you’re disappointed in the conversation you get with my boss, have a conversation with his boss.”
Tristram Stuart, a food waste campaigner, is not entirely convinced about the long-term benefits of the role however. He says: “At the point when you raise the spectre of the adjudicator in conversations with supermarkets, they start shuffling in their seats and saying 'well I hope we are going to be able to work together'.
“But when I spoke to suppliers in Kenya recently, what I found was that they were wasting roughly 40 per cent of the food that they grew, and that this was due to the cosmetic standards being applied to their produce, with beans, for example, being chopped halfway along their length in order to fit into those nice plastic trays that you see in supermarkets.
“I am concerned about how Christine is going to enforce the situation where a forecast has been changed and waste has been produced. The expectation is for there to be compensation paid to the supplier. I don’t know of anyone ever having done that.”
The efficacy of the adjudicator role will be reviewed by the government next year. But Tacon, who has already had one request for arbitration, warns: “Retailers beware – I am getting the information.”
