Member

I hope that the Government do not intend to seriously damage small retailers without allowing them sufficient time to adjust. I am not talking about the big supermarket groups but the small retailers here. As currently written, however, some of the provisions in the Bill will have precisely that effect, particularly for specialist retailers and manufacturers dealing in products such as handmade cigars and other niche goods. For these businesses the impact could be devastating—not because they are necessarily the intended target of the legislation but because they are caught up by it, through the breadth of its drafting and the absence of consultation with those who best understand how some of these specialist trades work in practice.