Food: Imports and Security

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that food inflation adversely affects those on the lowest incomes and she is right to raise the issue of healthy food for children. We have increased the value of our Healthy Start vouchers to £4.25 a week and spent around £600 million a year ensuring an additional 1.25 million infants enjoy a free, healthy and nutritious meal at lunchtime following the introduction of the universal infant free school meal policy of 2014. I am very happy to keep her and other noble Lords abreast of other conversations we have in the context of food and the work happening across government to help families deal with the cost of living crisis.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, could my noble friend assure us that, when he is helping to increase the productivity of farming in all its spheres, it will be done with the best science available, so that it will improve not only farming but nature at the same time?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We operate on the basis of the best scientific evidence. Sometimes the evidence presented to Ministers can be conflicting, and we have to make a value judgment. Scientific advice underpins our new farming systems, and there is a determination to produce food sustainably and reverse the catastrophic declines in species that we have experienced in recent decades—which, as the Dasgupta review pointed out, has an economic cost as well as a cost to our environment.