The stampede for headline / vote-grabbing policies is well under way. The Conservatives, not renowned for coming up with their own ideas, have finally recognised what the Competition Commission and the Liberal Democrats have been saying for years – you cannot trust the big supermarkets to regulate themselves.

The announcement that the Tories want a Supermarket Ombudsman to protect farmers is a huge U-turn for a party that, just two years ago caved into the supermarket’s lobby which promised that they would create their own code of practice. At the time, the Tories and Labour pooh-poohed Tim Farron, the Lib Dem Shadow Secretary for Environment, Agriculture and Food, who recommended the establishment of a Food Regulator in 2008. Two years on, the supermarkets have not kept their promise – surprise, surprise.

For decades British farmers have been fleeced by the supermarkets. By association, so have British taxpayers, who have made up the shortfall with subsidies. All this was the result of Conservative policies, including the ending of the Milk Marketing Board’s regulation in 1994.

On his retirement, a dairy farmer friend of mine told me the story of how the big dairies and supermarkets forced the Milk Marketing Board out of power in 1994 by bribing farmers with higher milk prices if they left the Board’s regulation. Eventually, sufficient farmers left the protection of the MMB that the John Major Government removed the boards regulatory powers. From that point on the dairies and supermarkets slashed their rates to farmers and have continued to do so ever since.

At his stinging speech at the Party conference in September, Tim Farron pointed out that in 1997 farmers were getting 22 pence per pint for milk. Today, despite a 20 % rise in milk prices on the supermarket shelves, most farmers get less than they did 13 years ago.

This has been bad for the cows, too. As far back as 2004, British dairy farmer, John Tuck registered a memorandum with parliament pointing out that the shift to extremely high-yielding Holstein dairy cows was not suited to the British dairy farming culture and causing distress and disease. At a time when environmentalists are warning us to buy our food locally and to protect our food security, the supermarkets are making British agriculture unviable and environmentally unfriendly.

The dairy market is just the tip of the iceberg. The fact is that farmers’ meagre margins are almost wholly supported by taxpayers subsidy while supermarket profits rise and rise. As Tim Farron rightly said, isn’t it time British dairy farmers got a Fair Trade price for the British milk we put in our Columbian Fair Trade coffee? There has to be Fair Trade for all farmers.

The 2008 Competition Commission report stated that Supermarkets had helped keep food retail costs down but that they had put unfair pressure on farmers and that this needed an ombudsman to oversee the industry. However, as other industries have discovered, an ombudsman can do little against the massive legal and lobbying power of the big supermarkets. It certainly won’t help the thousands of farmers currently living below the poverty line or the 8000 farmers who’ve been forced out of the industry in recent years.

As to keeping prices down, the Commission failed to note that for every British cabbage, carrot and pint of milk we see on entering a supermarket, we have already paid a deposit through our taxes. Neither farmers nor the public benefit from the overwhelming bargaining power of the supermarkets while they have free rein to pay less than cost for the produce they sell.

As we have discovered with the banks, the principle of a free market only works so long as businesses are not too powerful. There has to come a point where regulation is necessary and as the Wyre Forest planning department has discovered to its cost that regulation needs to be stronger than the businesses they are regulating. Neither the current system, nor the lip-service suggestions of the Tory pre-election manifesto will have the strength necessary.

We need a regulator with real teeth. As we announced early last year, the Liberal Democrats would set up a strong new code of practice for all grocery retailers turning over more than £1bn. This would be independently regulated by a new body with extensive powers. This would ensure farmers are given a fair price, that suppliers are given the confidence to invest and innovate, and that consumers are protected, too by ensuring that increased production costs are not added to hard-pressed family food budgets.

UK food security is dependent on fair trade for British growers and suppliers. Only a genuinely independent, proactive supermarket regulator will curb the powers of the "trolleygarchy" of supermarkets that dominates Britain's food market.

Neville Farmer Parliamentary Candidate Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats