NFU 2010: Lib Dems slam 'impotent' ombudsman plans

Instead Tim Farron, Lib Dem agriculture spokesman, said his party would create a ‘food market regulator’ which would ‘look for trouble on behalf of the farmer’.

“I’d love Hilary Benn, Nick Herbert and I to do a great big group hug on the supermarket ombudsman, but if I were to join in that group hug I’d be selling you guys out,” said Mr Farron at the NFU conference on Tuesday.

He said the Liberal Democrats would ‘go beyond a reactive, sedentary supermarket ombudsman and create a food market regulator’.

“We want a proactive food market regulator who would constantly monitor prices and enforce the code of practice - absolutely not to set prices, but absolutely to prevent fixed prices,” he said.

Mr Farron said the ombudsman model should operate like Ofcom - the telecommunications regulator - which would stand up to powerful players in the market.

He criticised the ombudsman envisaged by Labour and the Conservatives as no more than ‘a public relations exercise’.

“If you have ever had reason to appeal to the parliamentary ombudsman, the local government ombudsman or the NHS ombudsman, you will know that they are entirely reactive bodies, they only accept about 1 in 10 of the cases referred to them and they only find in favour of the applicant in about a third of those cases.

“The danger then is that as a public relations exercise, the Labour or Conservative concept of an ombudsman might come into being and end up being counterproductive.

“The existence of a relatively impotent ombudsman would then give the supermarkets political cover to allow them to demonstrate that they were being regulated when in reality they were not and we could end up in an even worse situation than we are in now,” said Mr Farron, before receiving a warm ovation from the audience.

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