Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Report
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for initiating this important debate and I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. What was absolutely apparent from the members of his committee who spoke was the respect they have for him and his chairmanship. It was so good to hear so many of the members of his committee contribute to our debate and I am grateful to them for bringing forward such an interesting report—the Hungry for Change report.
I fully admit that I have a difficulty here today, because I will irritate your Lordships if I hide behind the publication of future documents such as the Dimbleby report and the food strategy. However, I would be wrong to pre-empt those reports by prejudging them and saying too much at this stage. I hope your Lordships will humour me if I try and sail a middle course.
As highlighted in the committee’s comprehensive report,
“Food should be a source of enjoyment, good health and cultural expression”.
It is paramount that our food system delivers safe, healthy and affordable food for everyone, regardless of where they live or how much they earn. This Government are committed to ensuring that our food system is built on a sustainable and resilient agriculture sector so that we and future generations can continue to access good, healthy and sustainable food.
I will try to tackle as many of the points that have been raised in the debate as possible. I apologise if I cannot answer everybody, but if I cannot, I will try to write to them. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, raised a very important point. Since the start of the pandemic, government departments have come together to co-ordinate support for the most vulnerable. For example, the food for the vulnerable ministerial task force was set up a year ago to respond to some of the initial challenges of Covid-19 for a limited time with a defined remit. The task force membership spanned departments across government including the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, the Department for Work and Pensions and Ministers from the devolved Administrations.
The task force was instrumental in putting support for the most vulnerable in place. That included £63 million for the local authority grant scheme, delivered by Defra with support from MHCLG, to enable local authorities to provide further support for individuals struggling to afford food and essential items. There was £10.5 million for the food redistributor FareShare, £1.8 million for the Covid-19 emergency food redistribution scheme, £3.4 million to support individual charities through the food charity grant scheme and much more. Of course, the billions that have been spent on measures such as furlough have supported family incomes and therefore have contributed to tackling food poverty.
The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, raised a straightforward question, and I assure her that Defra is working closely with departments across Whitehall, including the Department for Health and Social Care and Public Health England. Defra has been feeding into discussions around the setting up of the office for health promotion to develop a White Paper when it is established. As part of these discussions, we are setting out a plan to ensure that the food system is sustainable and affordable, and that it supports industry and innovation and encourages healthy diets while protecting animal health and welfare.
The Government’s food strategy White Paper will cover the entire food system from farm to fork, building on work already under way in the agriculture and fisheries Acts, and the Environment Bill, as well as docking into wider government priorities, including build back better, levelling up, our net-zero strategy and our obesity strategy, which I will come on to.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made a powerful speech. I respected him when he was a Minister, but I simply cannot agree with him here. It would be an appalling situation if what he suggested was true, and I absolutely refute it. I would not be part of such a Government. It was an extraordinary allegation to make.
Like everyone in this House, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Sentamu, to his place here, as he returns for his second maiden speech. I wish him a happy birthday. He made a very powerful speech. He said that it is about “us”, not about “me”. The state does have a role. We often talk about big state versus small state, and there are times when many of us leading comfortable lives do not want the state taking all our taxes and interfering with us, but if you are poor and cannot afford to feed your children, you need loads of state, and it is about getting that balance right. He was absolutely right to raise that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, showed a great understanding, as we would all expect, of the food chain, and gave that very important statistic that 40 times the amount of money spent on advertising is spent on confectionary than is spent on fruit and veg. If noble Lords want to see the direction of travel that the Government are going in, and why they are asked Henry Dimbleby to do this work, they should look at Henry Dimbleby’s TED talk. It is nine minutes long and absolutely brilliant, because it talks about the holistic nature of the problem.
My noble friend Lord Hannan gave us a history lesson. I had the privilege of representing Newbury, a seat that was lost by the Conservative Party in the free trade election of 1906, when there was a bit of negative campaigning by the Liberal candidate—I know that is hard to believe—which suggested that the sitting MP, Mr Mount
“wants you to pay more for bread”,
because he was opposed to free trade. Mr Mount lost his seat, a factor that was well remembered by his great-grandson, David Cameron, and which made him so passionate about free trade. The noble Lord is right however, that we have to do it in the right way, and we must recognise the cost of bringing food from all over the world, not just in terms of what it costs individuals but what it costs our planet. We want to ensure that the Government’s policy about the standard of food that is produced is weighed in the balance as well. My noble friend Lady McIntosh made a very important point about the crisis—I put it like that—between lack of understanding about town and country, a point that was well supported by the noble Lord, Lord Curry. If I was not here and had not accepted this job, I would be at home with 800 schoolchildren visiting my farm today. I have left my wife in charge, so I will pay a price for that later.
The noble Lord, Lord Curry, made a very important point about obesity, as did my noble friend Lady Sanderson, the noble Baronesses, Lady Ritchie, Lady Osamor and Lady Scott, and of course the Opposition spokesperson. This year is the 30th anniversary of the first obesity strategy; there have been 14 government obesity strategies, introducing more than 700 policies but, since then, we have worse health outcomes related to diet, worse physical activity and worse mental health. Four out of five death and disability causes are diet-related. This is a social justice issue, a point well made in the Centre for Social Justice report, a brilliant piece of work chaired by my noble friend Lady Jenkin. This looked abroad at where success has achieved results, in places such as Amsterdam, and has fed through to an obesity strategy by implementing our policies and seeing them as part of an exciting, evolving long-term policy plan to improve population health. This can be the time when we break the decades-long cycle of repeated policies of little meaningful change. This is the opportunity we have to really tackle this problem. The Government’s obesity strategy is different from its predecessors and it is one that, with our support, will work.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made a characteristically powerful speech, but I say to her that in our changes to the farming system, we are now able to encourage all sorts of different farming activities. Next week, there is the Groundswell event, promoting regenerative farming. No longer will farmers be narrowly pathed down a route prescribed by a common agricultural policy that has been disastrous for our ecosystems and our health as well. This is an opportunity to get this right and we are determined to do it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, made a very important point about levelling up within communities. As Rural Affairs Minister, I take this very seriously. The rural poor are very often hidden from our eyes because they live in relatively affluent communities. The noble Baroness was absolutely right to point out that levelling up is not something that is just north-south or geographically important, which is why the Government and the committees, on some of which I sit, are really keen to make the point that we are looking for poverty wherever it exists, to tackle it and to end it. And, yes, we admit there is a problem. There is a problem when any single person is prevented from having a healthy diet out of poverty, and we are determined to tackle it. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that there is an urgency. The interim report that Henry Dimbleby wrote was responded to by the Secretary of State, but we will respond more fully as his main report is published and we will keep the House informed about that.
Tackling poverty in all its forms is a key priority of this Government. This includes ensuring that everyone has access to food. During the last year, significant support has been given to the economically vulnerable as part of the Government’s Covid-19 response. As I said earlier, this has included increasing the value of Healthy Start vouchers; the national rollout of the holiday activities and food programme; Covid support grants through local authorities; and direct funding to support food aid organisations. Building on the significant support given to the most vulnerable during the pandemic, the Government will continue to monitor food insecurity regularly. As part of the Agriculture Act we have included a new requirement to lay a comprehensive report on UK food security before Parliament by the end of this year and at least once every three years thereafter. The report will cover a range of current issues relevant to food security, including global food availability; supply sources for food; food supply chain resilience; household food security and expenditure on food; and food safety and consumer confidence.
I have already spoken about obesity, but it is one of the greatest long-term health challenges this country faces. Living with obesity reduces life expectancy, increases the chances of serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Covid-19 has brought this into even sharper focus, as excess weight increases the risk of serious illness and death from the virus.
The Government launched their obesity strategy a year ago, which sets out the actions to empower people to make informed and healthier choices about the food they purchase. It includes introducing calorie labelling on menus in cafes, restaurants and takeaways and restricting the advertising of high-fat, salt and sugar products being shown on television and online before 9 pm. This is not just about childhood obesity; this is about tackling the problem throughout society.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs: part 1 of Henry Dimbleby’s review of the food system was published in July last year and contained recommendations relating to the Covid-19 pandemic and the time preceding the end of the transition period. Several of these recommendations were aimed at addressing food insecurity, including the expansion of the holiday activities programme, as I have said. Having already taken steps to adopt some of the recommendations from the first report, we look forward to considering recommendations from the second.
Now that we have left the European Union, the Government are working to ensure that our food is produced more sustainably and that our environment is left in a better state than we inherited it. We published the agricultural transition plan in November 2020, which sets out our plans to gradually reduce and stop untargeted direct payments and invest the money freed up to pay farmers to improve the environment, animal health and welfare and reduce emissions. We will also provide significant grants to support farmers to invest in equipment, technology, and infrastructure that will improve their productivity in a sustainable way. I make this point to the noble Earl, Lord Devon: we want to ensure our farmers are supported to grow food in a way that also delivers environmental improvements. We are introducing three environmental land management schemes that reward farmers and land managers for producing public goods—the sustainable farming incentive, local nature recovery and landscape recovery. Together, these schemes are intended to provide a powerful vehicle for achieving the goals of the 25-year environment plan and our commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, while supporting our rural economy.
A number of your Lordships mentioned food waste. As your Lordships will know, the UK is—I am going to say it—a world-leader in tackling food waste, from educating the public on reducing food waste in our homes to making our supply chains greener. We are consulting this year on introducing regulations that would make the reporting of food waste volumes mandatory for food businesses of a certain size. By ensuring businesses are publicly reporting their food waste, we hope they will act to reduce it. The Environment Bill, which had its Second Reading in this House on Monday, will ensure that we go further to ensure less of our food is wasted. The Bill will ensure that councils operate weekly separate food waste collections to prevent food waste from going to landfill or being incinerated.
On trade, the UK is rightly proud of our food, health and animal welfare standards and environmental protections. As set out in our manifesto, we will stand firm in trade negotiations to ensure any future trade deals live up to the values of farmers and consumers across the UK.
We have said a lot about Henry Dimbleby and his reviews, but it is evident that food has an impact on all areas of our society—our economy, our environment and our health. It was for this reason that in 2019 Michael Gove, in a previous position, commissioned Henry Dimbleby to carry out a comprehensive review of the food system to help ensure it delivers healthy, affordable food, is resilient in the face of shocks and restores and enhances the natural environment. I want to thank Mr Dimbleby, on behalf of my department and others across Whitehall, for his tireless work. He really is an innovative thinker, and I will commend his report when it comes. From conversations I have had with him, it seems it is going to be ground-breaking.
I want to assure noble Lords that this Government are wholeheartedly committed to listening to Mr. Dimbleby’s recommendations set out in both parts of his independent review. These will inform our own food strategy White Paper, which we have committed to publishing within six months of Henry Dimbleby’s final report.
Defra is working with colleagues across Whitehall to ensure that the entirety of the food system is covered within the White Paper. It will build on work already under way in the Agriculture Act, Fisheries Act and Environment Bill, as well as on wider government priorities, including the others that I mentioned earlier.
I should make one final point to the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The question of meat and diet was raised by a number of noble Lords. There is a challenge for the farming community, and for us, to make the distinction between “good meat” and “bad meat”. Good meat is locally produced and grass-based. We have studied Stéphane Le Foll’s “4 per 1000” presentation to the Paris talks. It is a fantastic way in which to lock up carbon and deal with agriculture’s emissions. It is entirely virtuous to eat locally produced, grass-fed meat. Bad meat comes from a long way away, is often grown on feedlots and has a terrible impact on the environment in so many ways. That is a challenge that we have to face. We have to educate people about what the difference is. We can prove that meat is not bad but can be a real force for good in tackling climate change and our food miles.
I want to end by thanking noble Lords for taking part in this debate and for raising some extremely important points that I will take back to Defra and colleagues across Whitehall. I will look at Hansard and write to noble Lords to follow up on questions that I have been unable to answer.
The food system is complex and requires careful work to ensure that the nation has access to a healthy, sustainable and affordable food supply. Such work is no small feat, which is why our food strategy White Paper will see the Government leading pioneering, cross-cutting policies to establish the UK as a global leader, using a holistic, government-wide approach to transforming the food system. It is urgent and we are managing to do this at a time when we are introducing new farming systems, and dealing with Brexit, trade issues and the pandemic. But this issue is a priority for this Government and for my department. I eagerly anticipate the recommendations that will be set out in Henry Dimbleby’s report and discussing the food strategy White Paper with noble Lords in the coming months.