UK supermarket investigation going slowly

The UK Competition Commission's investigation of the supermarket industry is off to a slow start, with Tesco announcing that they will miss the deadline for responding to the commission's request for evidence.

Britain’s four largest supermarkets — Tesco, Asda, J Sainsbury and Wm Morrison — are believed to have concerns about the amount of information sought by the commission, which has asked for replies to 131 questions.

“It took one person five days to assemble the data for just one of the questions,” said one supermarket executive.

“Our systems are built for selling things — not mining financial data,” said another.

The questions — many of which include dozens of supplementary inquiries — cover a number of areas including buying, property, pricing and promotions.

There are also concerns that testifying against the big retailers could be unhealthy for witnesses.

Meanwhile, Mark Prisk, shadow minister for business and enterprise, has written to the Competition Commission seeking assurances that the anonymity of those who give evidence to the inquiry is protected.

“Concerns have been expressed to me about the risk of retaliatory or bullying tactics by larger players in the industry against those who may raise points unfavourable to them,” wrote Prisk.