Energy Costs

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support this debate, but I am always sad that we have to have it at all. In her Question to the House, the noble Baroness asks about the effect of rising energy costs. In my few minutes, I will talk about the effect this will have on food.

Potentially, 6 million households—not 6 million people—will have to choose between heating and eating, paying a bus fare or buying sanitary towels. Some 2 million of those households are, at the moment, keeping their heads above water, but come 1 April they are liable to sink below the waterline.

These energy price rises affect everything in the life of a family. Food is always the part of the budget that is squeezed. You can always, more or less, buy something cheaper and thus less healthy, or you can just choose not to eat at all. This already happens, not just in families but in cash-strapped councils and schools, which take bits of the schools food budget as it passes through their hands. Too many of our children are being served cheap food that limits their physical and mental progress; now even more of them will be suffering that at home. For many more, breakfast will be reduced to a packet of crisps and a fizzy drink; that might fill them up for a moment, but who is thinking of the long-term damage? Of course, we see all this in the Covid epidemic.

Food prices are also rising. The Government’s own food security report, published just before Christmas, acknowledges that the poorest 20% of households are

“more impacted by changes in food prices”,

and that

“With a decrease in income alongside the percentage spent on food having remained the same, the poorest households”


have had a really “diminished budget” since 2017. But why is food always singled out as an item of expenditure that can be, and often is, the first to be cut? The report again explains that

“expenditures such as electricity and gas bills are … non-discretionary, meaning that it is difficult for a household to cut back on spending.”

In a subsequent paragraph, the report confirms:

“For some households, it could also mean that people might rely on food aid”,


or completely miss meals.

The Government are armed with all the facts they need to justify action. They know full well that without such action there will be more visits to the food bank. This has certainly been the case at Feeding Britain. One little boy said to his mum when they were aboard one of our food buses the other day, ‘Do we really need to go home, mummy? If we stay here we have the internet, it’s warm and there’s food”. A dad who recently joined one of our affordable networks commented to a volunteer that he had the first piece of meat he had been able to afford in six weeks. Aboard another of our food buses, two-thirds of people signing up at the first couple of stops required both low-cost food and emergency credit on their meter. One family in London recently sought help late on a Friday afternoon, with just 5p on their meter. Even if they could get some food, how would they cook it? Pensioners have been especially badly hit. As I have spoken about before, they are reluctant, through a matter of pride and despair in this country, to have to turn to food banks. We have been able to set up many food banks in Glasgow—not something I am proud of having to do.

I urge the Government to look at every possible bit of support they can through the social security system and things such as the Robin Hood tax, the warm homes discount and winter fuel supplies. I also urge the Government not to turn their back on investment in green energy. It would be a very short-sighted decision to say that we will stop funding our investments in this direction. We will all pay for it in the long run. Quite frankly, the energy companies have made enough money out of all of us over so many years that to tax them to try to stabilise this situation seems only fair and just.