The Scottish Parliament's Environment and Rural Development Committee has agreed to conduct an inquiry into supermarket power. This decision follows a series of meetings between NFUS and MSPs.

Over recent weeks NFUS, has met with members of the committee, including Mark Ruskell (Green), Nora Radcliffe (Lib Dem), Alex Fergusson (Conservative) and Richard Lochhead (SNP), in an attempt to gather support for an inquiry.

NFU Scotland's ongoing campaign for fair trade between the UK's major supermarkets and their suppliers has focused on three priorities: an Office of Fair Trading inquiry into the growth of supermarket power in the grocery sector; the establishment of an independent supermarket watchdog to police fair trade between UK supermarkets and suppliers; and a Scottish Parliamentary Committee inquiry into the impact of supermarket power on rural development.

NFUS President, John Kinnaird, said:

"This news of a Scottish Parliamentary inquiry is extremely encouraging. It is the culmination of much work and persuasion by both NFU Scotland and individual MSPs. I am grateful to those MSPs who have raised this hugely important issue and secured an inquiry.

"The planned inquiry currently seems to focus on milk. It is perhaps the most obvious example of the problems caused by the growing gap between supermarket shelf price and unsustainable farmgate price. However, the inquiry provides an opportunity to focus on an issue that affects all Scottish producers.

"Whilst competition issues are reserved to Westminster, the misuse of supermarket power has huge knock-on consequences for the Parliament's rural development agenda, which is why we felt a Holyrood inquiry was essential. This is not just about farmers, but about rural communities, the countryside as a whole and consumers.

"This must not turn into a simplistic debate about whether supermarkets are 'good' or 'bad'. Supermarkets are here and here to stay; we simply need a system which allows us to trade with them on a fair and transparent basis which will benefit rural Scotland and, ultimately, consumers. The fact is there are excellent examples of where supermarkets work constructively with suppliers. However, there is also alarming evidence of abuses of supermarket power, with no check in the system to address them."

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