Ms Christine Tacon:

No, but I do not look at things in that detail. I ask if there is a written supply agreement. Aldi and Lidl generally tend to be at the high end but they might get scores of 70% and they say this is ridiculous, that it is impossible to trade with them without a supply agreement. Sometimes they think they do not have a supply agreement but perhaps it is the case that someone else in the business signed it off. I do ask about issues around supply agreements and I tell suppliers that there should be no surprises. A supplier should know exactly what it will cost them if something goes wrong. Following the Tesco investigation all the retailers have become much more diligent in making sure that everything is properly recorded.

Contracts, prices and agreements are not such a huge issue, what is more interesting is that some retailers will agree a price for a time and then will keep it. What tended to happen was that retailers, having agreed something, would then think that suppliers had pockets of money and would ask for money for this or that and suppliers are not very good at saying no. Retailers were realising that by varying contracts and trying to bring in new things, they kept getting more money out of the suppliers. I would be much stricter about the variations on agreements, that there can be no unilateral variations of agreements without reasonable notice and trying to tell suppliers that if they ask for something - such as in the Co-op investigation where in the middle of a fixed-term pricing agreement, they suddenly started charging money for depot rejections and for benchmarking - that is not allowed because they are in a fixed-price contract. If they want to bring in money for depot rejections and benchmarking, that is possible but it is done during the next renegotiation. It cannot be brought in in the middle of a contract, which is what had been going on. I do not think that it still goes on and if it does, I need to be told about it.