LOCKDOWN SALES ROW STORES HIT OVER AT ‘FIRE-BREAK’ RESTRICTIONS
RETAILERS yesterday hit out at a last-minute Welsh Government order – which emerged late on Thursday – to limit what supermarkets can sell during the 17-day lockdown.
The Welsh Retail Consortium called the idea “ill-conceived and shortsighted” as shops immediately began seeking answers to what is classed as essential and what is not.
First Minister Mark Drakeford said in a Senedd committee session that supermarkets will only be able to sell essential items during the lockdown, suggesting that this was more or less limited to food and drink.
The justification was to make it fairer to independent businesses being forced to close during the 17-day lockdown period.
Mr Drakeford said there will also be tighter restrictions on what supermarkets can sell during that time compared to the last national lockdown to create a “more even playing field” for small businesses.
Health Minister Vaughan Gething made it clear alcohol does count as a key item under the new rules – but insisted hair-dryers do not.
The Welsh Government’s move was welcomed by the Federation for Small Businesses.
But yesterday, as the nation prepared to enter lockdown, there was concern and confusion, with the Association of Convenience Stores and the Welsh Retail Consortium urgently writing to the First Minister, expressing alarm over the new regulations.
Sara Jones, head of the Welsh Retail Consortium, said: “Compelling retailers to stop selling certain items, without them being told clearly what is and what isn’t permitted to be sold, is ill-conceived and short-sighted.”
She told BBC Radio Wales yesterday: “We had the regulations on Thursday that defined what is an essential and non-essential retailer, but it certainly didn’t give us any indication of what those items are.
“The Welsh Government is now informing us that essential retailers can’t sell those non-essential items, but what constitutes those items? With less than 11 hours to go, how do we classify what the Welsh Government is dictating to us?
“It is very difficult, because what is essential to one person? A lightblub, a newborn babygro, a plug, how does this list work in reality?
“Until we have that clarity, this is a real logistical nightmare. It is not just an operational challenge for our members, it is also going to increase risk and harm to our colleagues and to consumers going in to stores. We need a list of some sort of affected items. The lack of notice is astonishing, it is very disappointing.”
James Lowman, chief executive of Association of Convenience Stores, said: “Retailers must not be forced to stop making products available to customers just because ministers don’t think they’re essential.
“These regulations are badly thought out, providing little to no notice to retailers, and must be scrapped to avoid chaos in shops across Wales.”
Edward Woodall, government relations director, added: “Stores will have to review thousands of products lines at incredibly short notice.
“This will also result in store layouts having to be reviewed that could undermine the safe flow of customers in store environments, the very antithesis of what your government is trying to achieve and what our members have strived to implement.”
Sue Davies, head of Consumer Protection and Food Policy at Which?, said: “This announcement will be sure to cause confusion, particularly amongst the vulnerable and the shielding.
“Our own research showed that almost half of those who described themselves as situationally vulnerable in Wales during the previous lockdown had difficulty accessing the food and groceries they needed.
“The Welsh Government must act now to clarify the situation around what retailers can and cannot sell, and must urgently identify those most in need to give them the support to ensure that no one who is at risk struggles to access the food and other basics they need.”
Aberconwy MS Janet Finch-saunders, chairman of the Cross Party Group on Small Shops, said: “I am incredibly alarmed by the First Minister’s comments, which amount to nothing more than misguided overreach.
“To announce an arbitrary restriction on the sale of non-essential products with less than 36 hours’ notice is wholly unfair. We should be standing with our businesses not placing ever greater hurdles in front of them.
“With Wales’s second national lockdown now imminent, it is totally unacceptable that our nation’s small shops still do not know what they can and cannot sell.”
Adding his comment, the Welsh Conservatives’ Shadow Minister for Covid Recovery, Darren Millar MS, said: “This is control freakery gone mad. The Welsh Government seems to take delight in taking away people’s freedoms and telling them what they can and can’t do. Now they are telling businesses what they can and can’t sell; it’s bonkers.”
But Ben Cottam, head of external affairs at the FSB, said: “It is FSB’S view that if large supermarkets were able to continue selling non-essential items at a time when their small business competitors on the high street are forced to close, this will create an unacceptable advantage for those large retailers and particularly as we are now in the run up to Christmas.”
Health Minister Mr Gething said: “The idea that we should go through line by line, item by item is wholly impractical, both for businesses and the government.
“What we are looking for is making sure people understand what they can and can’t do, and aren’t looking to avoid or get round the rules.
“We are not looking to have individual enforcement officers, looking to see if someone is selling cocktail sticks on an aisle in a shop that otherwise sells food.
“We are looking to make sure there is as high a level of compliance as possible, and equally, we are responding to some demands from some parts of business who have made very clear representations to us that they don’t want to do the right thing closing parts of their business, if other retailers don’t.”
Mr Drakeford described stopping supermarkets from selling non-essential products during the “firebreak” lockdown as “a straightforward matter of fairness”.
Mr Drakeford said the Welsh Government had been clear that nonessential retail would close during the 17-day period.
He told a press conference that any suggestion that the ban, which was announced on Thursday, was based on his own politics was “nonsensical”.
Mr Drakeford said: “We are requiring many hundreds of small businesses to close on the high street right across Wales.
“We cannot do that and then allow supermarkets to sell goods that those people are unable to sell.
“And we are looking to minimise the amount of time that people spend out of their homes during this two-week period.
“This is not the time to be browsing around supermarkets looking for non-essential goods.”
Mr Drakeford said trying to find exceptions to the rules was “just the wrong” approach and called on people in Wales to not use the “firebreak” to do things that they do not have to.
“It is a straightforward matter of fairness – we are in this together here in Wales,” Mr Drakeford said.
Images emerged yesterday afternoon of supermarket shelves and aisles being taped off and wrapped in plastic.
A Sainsbury’s spokesman said staff had been working “around the clock” to put the necessary changes in place.
“We’re focused on providing our customers with food and other essential items, in line with government guidance,” he said.
Tesco said staff were working “incredibly hard” to ensure stores complied with the Welsh Government’s ban on selling nonessential goods.
Asda confirmed the regulations meant that only products deemed essential could be sold during the lockdown.
“We have been given very little time to implement these changes or clarity on what is deemed ‘essential’,” a spokesman said. “We have expressed our deep concerns about the implications for customers accessing products they genuinely need and the risk to our colleagues’ safety.”