Edinburgh North & Leith MP, Mark Lazarowicz, has welcomed the decision by the Office of Fair Trading to call for an investigation into the grocery market, which will focus amongst things on the role of the big supermarkets.
Mark Lazarowicz said: Like many other MPs, I know that there is an increasing concern about the way that some of the big supermarket chains are driving out smaller shops and doing real damage to local shopping centres. This is an issue which has been raised with me by people in a number of different parts of my constituency who have seen local shops forced to close by the way some of the big supermarket chains have now started to move into the local convenience shopping market, in particular.

I hope that the Competition Commission will carry out an investigation which is both thorough and speedy, before any more damage is done. I also urge the Scottish Executive to make sure that planning decisions don’t give the big supermarket chains and the out-of-town shopping centre an unfair advantage over shops and shopping centres in towns who have to work within constraints which often don’t apply to out-of-town centres.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced in an interim ruling that they will ask the Competition Commission (CC) to conduct a full investigation of the UK grocery market. In particular the CC will look at:

• The planning system and supermarket land banks used to entrench dominant position in a local area
• Buyer power of the supermarkets and its impact on the supply of groceries for independent traders
• Supermarket pricing behaviour, below cost selling and price flexing
• The entry of supermarkets into local shop formats and the impact on competition in the high street