We should all be worried by the Wal-Mart revolution

`Wal-Mart can inflict huge damage on our retailers. But free trade does not mean a free-for-all'

I'M AN enthusiast for the best of our chain stores. Marks & Spencer, for example, may be going through a tough time, but you still know that you're buying quality when you go to their outlets. Despite ditching some of its traditional suppliers - swapping the prosaic William Baird for the more exotic Agent Provocateur - M&S will be demanding of its new partners the same tough checks.

Even though more merchandise will come from abroad, the company is determined not to condone the exploitation of child labour. These standards should be applied everywhere.

The coming of Wal-Mart should have set alarm bells ringing in every high street in the land. In much of the US there is not a lot left of the high street to lament. Only in New England has a mixture of citizens' action and tough planning laws kept the giant at bay. Now, in gobbling up Asda, Wal-Mart seems to have decided that Old England will be a softer touch.

Already the public relations machine has been putting on spin in the UK. It started even before owning a single store here. A one-to-one meeting for its top man was procured with the Prime Minister. No doubt having Hillary Clinton as a former director was no disadvantage there. Whatever happened then, and whatever nods and winks this Arkansas-based newcomer got afterwards, it was enough for Wal-Mart to go after Asda.

So now it's here, and we'll all have to fight to make Mr Prescott uphold the civilised planning laws designed to keep our town centres alive and our countryside green. That said, Wal-Mart has the capacity to do huge damage to British retailing, even with no new stores. The City certainly thinks that Wal-Mart has Boots in its sights. Wal-Mart, we can be sure, will concentrate on price competition; but the question is precisely how Wal-Mart is able to achieve very low prices.

It is to prevent the kind of damage to the British high street that I fear that led me to introduce to the House of Commons yesterday my Retail Standards Bill. My proposals are designed to try to ensure that competition on the high street is fair as well as free and that certain minimum standards in the welfare of workers and to safeguard the environment are observed by all. In short, I am trying to promote a level playing-field.

Yet when I raise Wal-Mart's blemished procurement record, too many suggest that it really isn't a matter for us. Even though in the US the company is alleged to have used sources our chains would have spurned, there are still people who so fear protectionism, they want no standards at all.

But it was the British who first civilised free trade and put bounds on competition. Whether it's weights and measures, trade descriptions or the protection of the vulnerable and the environment, we expect Parliament to lay down the rules within which free trade operates. Increasingly, too, we insist upon labelling that allows us to make informed choices.

However, in the wider world no such inhibitions prevail. Indeed, all the signs are that the World Trade Organisation, when it meets later this month in Seattle, will again fail to make the connection between global trading and global responsibility. Free trade ought not to mean a free-for-all. If it is important at home to have civilised standards of health and safety, pollution control and employment law, then it is even more important in the globalised economy where the very poor are even more vulnerable.

That makes the example we set in Britain all the more vital. I want every retail chain to state clearly in each of its outlets its policy towards these great issues. What environmental standards does it enforce? Does it, like Kingfisher, refuse to stock products made of wood unless they have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council? I'm all for low prices and tough competition, but not at the expense of the world's rainforests. If Wal-Mart can buy, say, identical lavatory seats in China cheaper than Woolworths, owned by Kingfisher, then all well and good. Yet, if those seats are cheaper simply because they are made of wood that is not sustainable, from fast-disappearing forests, then that is not all well and good - and we have a right to know about it.

So, too, with cheap labour, the subject of The Independent's recent "global sweatshop" campaign. If you shop in, say, Marks & Spencer, then you are assured that the company has a tough code of conduct. Unlike Wal-Mart, that company has never made clothes in Saipan, a remote island in the Pacific where some of the world's poorest people have little alternative but to work long hours, in primitive conditions, for a pittance. Sadly, the retailers who spurn such practices are easily undercut by those who are prepared, allegedly, to condone them. My Bill would give customers the right to know where their retailer stands.

American companies have not been under such fierce pressure for sourcing details. Price has been much more the dominant driver. However, it would do them a favour if they started afresh in the more demanding conditions of the UK. Their environmental policy would have to be far better worked out. Their procurement wold be more expensive but much more satisfactory. Above all, the change in culture that comes from a need to face these issues might well make the management see why we don't want vast stores destroying our countryside and denuding our towns.

Wal-Mart will still be a tough competitor. It may still reduce the prices of goods in British superstores. Yet it must do so by operating on a level playing-field. Britain must not allow those lower prices to be bought at the cost of debasing our ethical and environmental standards.

The writer was Secretary of State for the Environment from 1993 to 1997