Lib Dems promise food market regulator

The Liberal Democrat agriculture spokesman Tim Farron will today tell the National Farmers' Union conference his party would create a body that would constantly monitor prices and proactively look for problems on behalf of the farmer.

Mr Farron said such a figure would prevent prices being fixed at low levels and function much like the Ofcom regulator does for the broadcasting industry.

The pledge comes after the Government announced it was to create a supermarket ombudsman to police the industry.

But Mr Farron will today say that ombudsmen are reactive officials who only take on around 10 per cent of the cases referred to them.

He will say: "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.

"Liberal Democrats will go beyond a reactive, sedentary supermarket ombudsman and create a strong food market regulator whose job it would be to go out and look for trouble on behalf of the farmer and the consumer.

"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 farmgate prices being fixed at an artificially low level.

"Rather than using the ombudsman model, it would be much more effective to look at Ofcom as a model of a hands on regulator, there to stand up to powerful players in the market and ensure that fairness results."

Mr Farron will be joined by his Tory counterpart Nick Herbert and the Hilary Benn, Secretary of State at the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, at the conference in Birmingham today as all the main parties begin their pitch to rural voters block ahead of this year's General Election, expected in May.

Speaking ahead of the conference, the NFU's president Peter Kendall urged whichever party finds itself in power to use the experience and expertise that farming could offer to drive the country forward

He said: "I have been arguing that farmers and growers could offer solutions to some of the enormous problems that mankind will have to grapple with over the next 50 years and my conviction remains stronger than ever in the face of food shortages and potential energy crises.

"But – and this is a big but – unless Government agrees to sensible financial incentives and smarter spending, the solutions on offer will be strangled at birth."