Liberal Eye

We all know that British supermarkets are highly competitive and give outstanding value for money.  And how do we know?  We know because they told us so.

If you smell a rat you are right.

What we actually have are 4 near-identikit firms who maintain an illusion of competition but actually have no real interest in duffing each other up and every interest in maintaining a system that suits them just fine.  What they actually do is to use their size and power to roll over and squelch any upstart competition that emerges so ensuring that real competition is minimised and that they are left with free reign to beat up their suppliers and achieve ever greater margins.

As Cheshire dairy farmer Ray Brown told the BBC:

“If you [the farmer] are lucky you get 26-27 pence per litre, it’s the same price as we were getting 11 years ago.

 

“Supermarkets have a big score to settle there. The consumer then was paying 40 pence per litre, currently they are paying 57-58 pence.”

 

He’s absolutely right.  This means that consumers are being overcharged by a minimum 45% by the supposedly ‘competitive’ supermarkets (and that’s only using the reference point of 11 years ago).  Could there be any clearer evidence of market failure?  Could there be any clearer justification for a strong anti-monopoly response from Govt?

I think hard-pressed families (and farmers!) deserve some answers and some action.

In this context the publication yesterday of the latest investigation by the Competition Commission is yet another depressing example of the utter uselessness of the established system of regulation (see also Northern Rock etc).   Predictably, and in line with established form, the results will not worry the supermarkets.  Not that they actually wrote it as such but they do seem (as David Boyle suggested recently in this excellent piece on monopoly) to have successfully framed the issues in ways that play right into their hands.  It’s appears that in the rose-tinted World of the Competition Commission the supermarkets are basically virtuous and hence deserving of all possible support—which they are naturally pleased to give with just the lightest possible rap on the knuckles.

For instance a principle plank of the CC’s proposals is that planning applications for new stores or store extensions should be made subject to a ‘competition test’.  At first this seems reasonable until you stop to think that using Planning to address a Competition issue is basically barmy.  Moreover, it does nothing to address established local abuses—for instance Tescopoly reports that Tesco is the dominant retailer in 67% of postcode areas and has a greater than 50% market share in 5 areas.  (In contrast note that the CC had earlier concluded that over market shares of over 8% lead to abuse).

Another main plank of the CC’s proposals is that a supermarket ombudsman be appointed to oversee and where necessary enforce a stronger code of practice for dealing with suppliers.  Predictably the supermarkets are engaging in heavy breathing and talking ominously of costs of “hundreds of millions … which could be passed on to the consumer”.  To say this is a bit rich in view of their soaring margins on for instance milk is an understatement.

Actually, I too am opposed to the idea of a revised code of practice but for a very different reason.  It’s an administrative solution for a problem that requires a market solution and as such it simply won’t work for its intended purpose—although it might well provide lots of new civil service jobs!

David Boyle is absolutely right—Lib Dems should make this issue their own.

If you’re apartment-hunting in Paris “contre services” is what you hope not to see in an advert - especially if you’re an attractive female student.  It can be perfectly innocent, but all too often it’s a not-so-subtle code meaning that the rent will include sexual favours.

This is the iniquitous result of a housing crisis that the French Government admits is the worst since WW2 with money rents (never mind the ‘extras’) rising far beyond the reach of most ordinary people.  The BBC has more here.

No doubt many lessons can and should be drawn from this but what strikes me is what it tells us about markets.  All too often we forget that the undoubted beneficial power of markets is subject to some rather restrictive but crucial conditions like, for example, that there are ‘many willing buyers and sellers’.  When this is not so, when the one of the parties is not so much willing as desperate, then the balance of power becomes too unequal and the market becomes dangerously perverse.

In other words, a market can malfunction just as dangerously as the brakes on your car if they are not properly maintained.  Such maintenance is a core responsibility of government in a complex modern economy and it neglects it at the extreme peril of the more vulnerable members of society - the old, the young, the poor, the sick.  Labour is, of course, neglecting it which is why they are finding inequality, child poverty etc. so intractable.