Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Report

Lord Krebs Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Krebs]

That this House takes note of the report from the Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Hungry for change: fixing the failures in food (Session 2019–21, HL Paper 85).

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to introduce this debate on behalf of the Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment. I start by thanking all the members of the committee for their excellent contributions to our inquiry. In particular, I thank my noble friend Lady Boycott, as well as Anna Taylor of the Food Foundation, who first suggested the idea for this inquiry. We were supported by two superb specialist advisers, Professor Martin White from Cambridge University and Professor Elizabeth Robinson from Reading University. We received over 100 submissions of written evidence and heard 44 oral evidence witnesses. Last but not least, I express our gratitude for the support of a truly outstanding team of Beth Hooper, the committee clerk, Sam Kenny, the policy analyst, and Rebecca Pickavance, the committee assistant.

The title of our report, Hungry For Change: Fixing the Failures in Food, neatly encapsulates our findings. Our witnesses told us that the food system in this country is broken and that the poorest people suffer the most as a consequence. In a moment I shall explain in more detail what this means and what we recommended as solutions, but I hope noble Lords we will indulge me if I start with a very short historical digression.

As the historian David Cannadine wrote:

“For most of recorded history … poverty was not a problem at all: it was a fact of life … Only … during the last two hundred years, has it been upgraded from an insuperable and ‘natural’ condition into an intolerable but solvable problem”.


He might have said “in principle a solvable problem”, because in the past 200 years, although we have had the means to eradicate poverty in Britain, we have not done so.

Perhaps the clearest manifestation of poverty is malnutrition. Some 100 years ago, malnutrition in Britain meant starvation. Although we were the richest country in the world in the late 19th century, malnutrition among the poor was rife. The Government took notice when they tried to recruit soldiers for the second Boer War in 1899: 80% of the recruits were deemed unfit to fight and the Army had to reduce the height threshold for recruits from five feet three inches to five feet because poor people were so short as a result of malnutrition. The Government of the day were shocked into action and set up an Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, which recommended that the poorest children in this country should be given free school meals.

Fast forward another 120 years, and today, according to official figures, between one in four and one in five children in this country still live in poverty. This is probably an underestimate, as the Government’s measure is based entirely on relative income and does not consider the cost of living a decent life. Today’s malnutrition associated with poverty manifests itself in two very distinct ways: either poor people cannot afford to buy enough to eat—they are undernourished—or they can afford or get access to only an unhealthy diet, commonly known as junk food, which might fill them with cheap and delicious calories but at the same time contribute to chronic disease and a shortened lifespan. The resulting inequalities are stark. Healthy life expectancy for the poorest decile in this country is about 53 years—nearly 20 years less than for the richest decile. By the age of five, children in the poorest areas are already twice as likely to be obese as children of the same age in the least deprived areas.

Modern malnutrition is not the only factor, but the evidence we heard suggested that it is significant in contributing to these inequalities. The term often used to describe the stress of poverty and food is “food insecurity”, which the National Diet and Nutrition Survey defines as

“limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.”

The Government have not in the past routinely measured food insecurity, but in March this year the DWP estimated that 13% of children in this country live in low food security and 6% in very low food security.

Nothing that I have said so far is new, but successive Governments have done precious little about it, perhaps because it is often below the radar. Tia from Lancashire, one of our witnesses living with food insecurity, said this:

“You know everyone’s struggling but you just don’t know how much everyone is struggling because no one wants to talk about it. An older person who is struggling doesn’t want to talk about it because they feel embarrassed or they’re embarrassing their kids. Some people don’t want to talk about it in Darwen”—


where she comes from—

“because there is such a stigma.”

The pandemic has underlined the problems of food insecurity and food poverty. Obese people appear to be more likely to die of Covid-19. At the same time, we were told that food bank use—an indicator of food poverty —has risen by 81%.

I turn from describing the problem to some of our proposed solutions. We made more than 50 recommendations. Noble Lords will be relieved to know that I will not go through all of them; I shall highlight just a few. First, on the causes of food insecurity, many of our witnesses referred to universal credit. We were told that the five-week delay in receiving payment and the fact that the amount of benefit does not consider the cost of a healthy diet are major contributors to food insecurity. The Food Foundation estimates that the poorest decile of the population would have to spend 74% of their disposable income to eat according to the government guidelines for a healthy diet. Eating unhealthily is much cheaper. For the richest decile, the figure is just 6%.

Money is important but not the only factor. We also heard that access to healthy food—many people live in so-called food deserts—knowledge, time and the emotional bandwidth to think about diet and health were also important. We acknowledge that other select committees were investigating the universal credit system, but we recommended that the cost of a healthy diet should be included in the calculation of the quantum of benefit. We also recommended that the Government should address the problem of food poverty among those with no recourse to public funds and that the value of Healthy Start vouchers should be increased. Finally, we recommended that the Government should collect data on food insecurity through the National Diet and Nutrition Survey.

I turn to the food system. Many of our witnesses told us that the UK food system is not fit for purpose and they called for whole-system change. What does a food system actually mean? It refers to the way food is produced, processed, marketed, sold and consumed—everything from plough to plate. In comparison with other European countries, we eat a relatively high proportion of highly processed food, artfully constructed by the food industry to be cheap and delicious. We as humans are evolutionary programmed to like sugar, fat and salt, as these were essential for survival in our ancient history. It is cheap processed foods, high in sugar, fat and salt—commonly known as junk food—that contribute to dietary ill health and health inequalities.

On the basis of the evidence we heard, we recommended a series of changes to the food system to make healthier choices easy, especially for the poorest people in this country. These included restrictions on the promotion and advertising of unhealthy food—food high in fat, sugar and salt—and greater pressure on the food industry to reformulate highly processed food. We noted that there was good progress in the early days of the salt reduction campaign—I declare an interest as chairman of the Food Standards Agency when that was launched—but this appears to have stalled since responsibility for it was taken away from the FSA. We also heard that the soft drinks industry levy had been successful in reducing the sugar content of soft drinks and should therefore be extended to other products.

We felt that local authorities need to be given the powers and incentives to restrict the creation of new fast-food outlets, which are often the only way to get food in the poorest communities. We recommended a mandatory limit on the calories per portion in the out-of-home sector. When we asked a representative of the fast-food sector why it sells such massive portions of chips, he said, very honestly, “That’s because it’s about competition; the bigger the portion, the better value for money the people who shop for it feel that it is.” We concluded that labelling has a role to play but that it is mostly used by those who are least in need of help to improve their diets—the worried well.

Malnutrition starts in infancy, and the life trajectories of poor diet are set early on. I have already referred to the obesity figures for children by the time they are five years old. We made recommendations about school food and childhood nutrition. School meals standards should be properly monitored and evaluated—which they are not—and initiatives to address holiday hunger, as well as the national school breakfast programme, should be properly funded. I am sure that other noble Lords will expand on these points.

I turn briefly to the impact of food on the natural environment. At the time of our inquiry, the then Agriculture Bill was still in progress, and a number of our recommendations relating to it are now out of date. There is no doubt that, in this country and globally, food production is a major contributor to environmental damage—using fresh water, contributing to climate change and to the destruction of natural habitats, as well as the use of pesticides which pollute the environment and damage wildlife.

Three points are of continuing relevance. We recommended that the Government should include environmental sustainability alongside health in its dietary guidelines. As part of this, the Government should develop a plan to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, because we know that the consumption of too much red meat is bad for both health and the environment. Finally in this section, we recommended that the Government should adhere to their commitment to not allowing the importation of food produced to lower environmental standards than that produced in the UK, and not simply offshore the problem of environmental damage. I would welcome unequivocal confirmation on this from the Minister, particularly as I still hear the view from senior politicians that cheaper, lower-standard imported food will be beneficial for poor people in this country.

In concluding my summary of the recommendations, I return briefly to governance. Henry Dimbleby will shortly publish the second part of his national food strategy, following which the Government are committed to publishing a White Paper within six months. According to the Minister,

“This strategy will set out proposals that will aim to ensure that the food system delivers healthy, sustainable, affordable food for all.”—[Official Report, 20/10/20; col. 1473.]


How do we know that the strategy will be implemented? We recommended the creation of an independent oversight body, analogous to the Committee on Climate Change, to monitor and report on progress on implementation.

The Government’s response to our report fell broadly into three categories. The first was, “We are waiting for the national food strategy.” Part I of the national food strategy was published nearly a year ago, shortly after our report. It made a number of similar recommendations to ours. I am not aware that the Government have formally responded, and I hope that the Minister will update us. The second category of response was, “We reject the recommendations”—for instance, embedding the cost of a healthy diet in benefit rates; uprating Healthy Start vouchers; improving the poorest schoolchildren’s access to healthy food; giving local authorities more power to restrict new fast-food outlets; accelerating the reformulation of unhealthy food; and establishing an independent oversight body to oversee implementation of the national food strategy. The third category was, “We will consider further action”—for instance, restricting the promotion and advertising of junk food.

Overall, I was, frankly, disappointed by these responses. However, since then, we have seen some developments. Following Marcus Rashford’s campaign, the Government have committed to allocating additional money to support holiday free school meals. I hope the Minister will confirm that this will be a long-term commitment. The Government have announced that they intend to ban adverts for junk food before the 9 pm watershed and online, restrict in-store marketing and require calorie labelling in food outlets with more than 250 employees. I would welcome confirmation from the Minister that these plans will go ahead and some indication of the timeline. Last week, it was reported that, following a legal challenge, eligibility for Healthy Start vouchers will be extended to asylum seekers and immigrants without settled status.

In conclusion, I hope that these recent developments are a sign that the Government are at last taking the issue of poverty, diet, health and the environment seriously. I look forward to the contributions from other noble Lords, and to the Minister’s response. I hope he will update us on progress and assure us that, when it is published, the White Paper will really address the urgent issues in our report. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

In concluding, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for their excellent contributions. We have heard many well-thought- out and passionate remarks, and I am sure that the Minister can be in no doubt about the strength of feeling and interest in this topic from across this House.

I particularly thank and congratulate my noble and right reverend friend Lord Sentamu for his thoughtful speech, and wish him happy birthday. I wrote down two comments that he made. The first was to reimagine the kind of country in which you want to live and the second was to come up with practical proposals for radical change. I hope that, when we finally see the food strategy in the White Paper, it embraces those two thoughts.

I also thank the Minister for his reply and, at the same time, as this is my first opportunity, I congratulate him on his appointment as Minister in Defra. I am very much looking forward to working with him in the future. He warned us that he might disappoint slightly by alluding to the national food strategy, rather than giving us the answers here and now. He did indeed postpone the answers to a few questions, but he generally tried to respond to some of the points made. Towards the end, I noticed, he succumbed to the temptation to refer to the national food strategy as “world-leading”, despite the cautionary note sounded by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

In closing, I return to the question of governance. Henry Dimbleby’s work will no doubt be excellent. From looking at part 1 and talking to him, from time to time, I know that he is thinking deeply and innovatively about these problems, but there is a danger that, like other very good reports, it all ends up in a filing cabinet. That is why we were so keen to have independent scrutiny of the implementation of Dimbleby, through the White Paper and food strategy. The Government rejected our proposal to set up a new quango. I can see why; it is anathema for Governments to create quangos that then cause trouble. I still believe that would be the best mechanism but, as an olive branch, I offer an alternative for the Minister to take away.

The problem with food is that it does not come top of the agenda in any government department, except one—the Food Standards Agency. This is a non-ministerial department with food as its central priority. In closing, I ask this question for consideration: why not charge the Food Standards Agency with the task of monitoring and reporting on progress in implementing the national food strategy? It would not involve creating a new quango, and would help to ensure that we keep our eyes on the prize of tackling the costly and debilitating blot on our society that is food poverty.

Motion agreed.