Iceland boss Walker: Which? super-complaint was 'bollocks'

• Iceland boss Walker slams Which? super-complaint
• He says grocers have become “a cheap target”
• Comes after CMA found most supermarkets were acting responsibly on promotions

More than 100,000 people signed a petition started by the consumer group after it found examples of “dodgy special offers” being used in grocers across the UK, during the past seven years.

Which? said the offers could be “breaking government guidelines”, but a 90-day investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) concluded that most supermarkets were acting responsibly on promotions and were taking compliance “seriously”.

“You look at the number of investigations into food retailers – and why? It’s political, we are a cheap target.”

Malcolm Walker, Iceland

CMA senior director, consumer, Nisha Arora, told Retail Week that 800 of the 150,000 products assessed in the probe were subject to “potentially misleading pricing” – just 0.5% of all lines being sold by grocers.

Walker said it proved that supermarkets were not guilty of wrongdoing and insisted customers were getting an “amazing deal.”

Asked what he made of the super-complaint, Walker told Retail Week: “It’s bollocks.

“You look at the number of investigations into food retailers – and why? It’s political, we are a cheap target. They never find anything.”

He added: “It is intensely competitive, the customers are getting an amazing deal – we are selling things often at cost or sometimes below cost.

“Customers have always had an amazing deal because even though our margins have been high in the past, the standards in British supermarkets have been phenomenal.

“You go into a Sainsbury’s or Waitrose and they are just beautiful stores with high standards compared to countries abroad.”

Problems ‘not systemic’

Walker’s comments came after the British Retail Consortium said: “While the CMA report noted a limited number of specific examples of potentially confusing practices, it has concluded quite clearly that these problems are not systemic across the industry as we have always maintained.”

But Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: “The CMA’s report confirms what our research over many years has repeatedly highlighted: there are hundreds of misleading offers on the shelves every day that do not comply with the rules.

“This puts supermarkets on notice to clean up their pricing practices or face legal action.

“Given the findings, we now expect to see urgent enforcement action from the CMA. The Government must also quickly strengthen the rules so that retailers have no more excuses.”