Speeches by Tufnell.

“You warned Amazon, but then why did it take you 12 months from that warning to launch the investigation?”

“In 2024 you had less than half of Amazon suppliers reporting they believed the retailer to adhere to the supply code of practice, so that is stretching flexibility, it seems.”

“It may be my own ignorance and lack of understanding of the milk market but, picking up on what Sarah mentioned, I was wondering why there is such a discrepancy between the price the farmers are paid for their milk and the milk on the supermarket shelves?”

“When you look at the surveys and you see those discrepancies, why do you think the new entrants have a bigger issue in respect of compliance versus those that are a bit more long-standing?”

“There were quite a lot of small regressions. If we look at invoice discrepancies, that was an increase of 3% from the previous year, and with delays in payments you again have an increase of 3%. Delisting without reasonable notice was unchanged, but you still have an increase in costs with inaccurate forecasting. You h…”

“That sounds a little like an apologist or a PR machine for the supermarkets; rather than saying, “This is unacceptable, this is what you need to do for compliance,” it is, “We appreciate that you have some issues with your back office and with your systems and this is the reason; we understand that and that is okay.” I…”

“Amazon for example, has consistently performed poorly in your surveys and shown little improvement. Have you launched an investigation?”

“Do you think you have enough teeth? You have told the Chair you have nine staff and—what was it—£3.5 million?”

“Mr White, you have mentioned your survey a couple of times, both to Mr Dewhirst and to the Chair. Your annual survey was released last week, is that right?”

“Why do you think Amazon is performing so poorly in respect of your surveys?”

“Is there anything you can do to protect the farmers in these circumstances?”

“You warned Amazon, but then why did it take you 12 months from that warning to launch the investigation?”

“Thank you, Chair and members of the Committee, for hearing this application. We are at a critical juncture in our UK energy policy, and the current policy raises important questions about energy security, the future of British industry and manufacturing, and the pace of those policy sequencing decisions. As you can see…”

“You talk about risk, and the regulator is there to manage that risk and hold you to account. The DWI found that you did not carry out any jar testing in October, despite there being a requirement under regulatory notice to do so, and that the original coagulant should have worked had the optimisation process been follo…”

“One of the problems that we have at the moment is that a lot of these issues span Whitehall. The Cabinet Office is responsible for the negotiation with the European Union, the Treasury has responsibility for the carbon border adjustment mechanism, and DESNZ obviously has responsibility for net zero and energy security.…”

“You did not do a jar testing until 28 November.”

“You have been taking best practice from Severn Trent for three or four years?”

“Part of understanding what maintenance needs to be done is that you have to monitor what is happening in the first place. The DWI also set out that there was not enough monitoring going on at the Pembury works, particularly around optimising that coagulation process. There was no continuous temperature monitoring, and …”

“The importance of the issue, the impact on all our constituents, the ongoing conflict in the middle east, rocketing energy prices and the imminent negotiations with the European Union mean that this is an incredibly important debate to be having. I think that having it in the Chamber would reflect its importance to our…”

“Let us talk about being asleep at the wheel, shall we? The DWI set out what you were doing in the control room. It is only manned Monday to Friday during the day, and there is no one there otherwise to monitor issues and nothing to see the emerging problems. Do you not think that is being asleep at the wheel?”