DESPITE the fact that Christine Tacon, the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) has launched an investigation into Tesco over payments to suppliers, a food supply chain expert has claimed she does not have the teeth to effectively re-primand the supermarket.

Duncan Swift, head of the food advisory group at accountants Moore Stephens said: “Mrs Tacon had little choice but to launch an investigation into Tesco.”

But it would appear that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) never expected the GCA to get to the stage where an investigation would be launched.

“I have been banging on to the Competition Commis-sion that the role is designed to fail because of the lack of power to reprimand.”

Mrs Tacon was recently given powers to fine retailers who breach the Groceries Supply Code of Practice, although these powers cannot be applied retrospectively and therefore cannot be used in the Tesco investigation.

The investigation will cover Tesco’s conduct dating back to June 25, 2013, until February 5, 2015.

The decision to launch the investigation was taken after Mrs Tacon reviewed information submitted re-lated to the retailer’s profit overstatement last year.

Tesco is also being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Reporting Council.

Speaking about the investigation Mrs Tacon said: “I have applied the GCA-published prioritisation principles to each of the practices under consideration and have evidence that they were not isolated incidents, each involving a number of suppliers and significant sums of money.”

A Tesco spokesman said: “An internal review we carried out and shared with the GCA identified some areas of concern.

“We have taken action to strengthen compliance andwe are changing the way we work with suppliers.”

The investigation will cover delays in payments including areas of:

- Short deliveries, including imposition of penalties;

- Consumer complaints where the amounts were not agreed;

- Invoicing discrepancies such as duplicate invoicing where two invoices were issued for the same product; and

- Deductions for unknown or un-agreed items.