Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Report

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I join with all those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and his committee and team on producing a report that is remarkably broad and deep. It has been impeccably researched and contains clear recommendations that still stand, despite the time lag since it was written. I also want to congratulate the noble and right reverend Prelate, Lord Sentamu, on his second maiden speech and to wish him a happy birthday. I hope that we can finish our debates early enough for him to enjoy what is left of it.

It does not matter how often you read this report or the evidence that goes along with it: there is always something new to shock and sadden you. That we are still having this debate some three-quarters of a century after Beveridge identified want as one of the “great giants” to be slayed should make us all stop and wonder where our collective system of government has gone wrong.

Much in the personal evidence and testimony is pretty heart-rending, but for those who are of a less emotional disposition than I am, there is also a huge amount of evidence about the cost to the public purse of poor diet in its various forms: an estimated £6 billion to the NHS. Public Health England has predicted that UK-wide costs attributable to obesity alone will reach £9.7 billion by 2050, with wider costs to society being estimated to reach almost £50 billion by then. According to the Sustainable Food Trust, for every £1 spent in shops by UK consumers, another £1 is spent by taxpayers in associated costs. As the report states, continuing with business as usual actually makes no economic sense.

Over the past 15 months we have seen government intervention on a scale we could never have imagined before. Levels of public expenditure and restrictions on our personal liberty have been accepted by the public, by and large, because they can see the need for drastic action at this time of crisis. But as the report demonstrates, failure in the food—[Inaudible]—and has been accelerated by the pandemic. None of the proposals suggested by this report, by noble Lords today or by any of the groups that have given evidence come anywhere near to government intervention on the scale we have seen in the last year, but what they do require is an act of will.

One of the things that comes across clearly in the report, and which has been raised by a number of noble Lords, is that while there is no shortage of data, very little of it is being collected by the Government. They simply do not have any benchmarks or data. The committee received a lot of evidence. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, identified how the Government either do not know about, or are not saying anything about what they regard as, problems in the food system. For example, the food security assessment was last published as a complete document in 2010. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister about this.

There also appears to be a massive disconnect between the Government’s aspirations on one side and their actions on another. A number of noble Lords have raised the point about the standards for a healthy diet and a benefits system that puts such a diet far beyond the reach of recipients. Another example is the childhood obesity plan, which makes recommendations that are very hard for poor families to follow. Five years on, childhood obesity levels are rising—this point was made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sanderson and Lady Osamor. As my noble friend Lady Janke said, if you are an obese child, you are much more likely to be an obese adult, so this is an ongoing cost.

The Government are putting a lot of store by their levelling-up agenda, which is usually seen in a geographical context, with solutions that are based on investment in physical infrastructure. However, we need levelling up within communities as well because, even within prosperous communities, there are areas of deprivation and individuals in serious need. Where I live, the Suffolk Community Foundation has done some remarkable work in producing a report called Hidden Needs, which describes the poverty that exists even in a relatively prosperous county such as Suffolk. Diet-related ill health is much more likely to affect those in lower-income groups, and it is reasonable to accept that those who are struggling to afford to eat are struggling to afford to eat properly.

As we have heard in today’s debate, and in the report:

“Food insecurity not only damages physical health but also causes social harm bringing profound anxiety and stress to families and can affect children’s school attendance, achievement and attainment.”


I know that the Government will argue that creating jobs in deprived areas would deal with this, but it is worth noting that food poverty is not just an issue for the workless. Pre pandemic, the biggest growth in food bank use was among people who were working in either low-paid or unpredictable zero-hours-type jobs. As we have heard, child poverty has risen from 3.6 million to 4.1 million since 2010, and seven out of 10 of those children live in a family where at least one parent is working.

Others argue that it is possible to retrain and upskill workers out of poverty. I am very much in favour of doing both, but the fact remains that we need workers in jobs that we tend to call “unskilled”. It cannot be right that people who are doing these jobs, many of whom we simply could not do without—the pandemic has really highlighted their value to society—can work full time in those sectors and still rely on food banks to feed their families.

As the report sets out, food insecurity is largely a “consequence of poverty”. The idea that we could somehow trade our way out of it and that buying cheap food would solve the problem simply flies in the face of the facts in this report and others. As the report also sets out, and as we have heard clearly from the noble Lord, Lord Curry, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and others, this is not just a matter of food insecurity and poverty. There is a fundamental problem with our whole food system. Evidence from the Food Foundation, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and others has shown that the least healthy diets actually produce more carbon emissions than the most healthy ones.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, pointed out, there are still high levels of food waste in the UK. An estimated 10.2 million tonnes of food and drink are wasted virtually at the farm gate. This is worth £20 billion, and to that we can add food waste at every stage, through production, retailers, the food service sector and consumers.

Many noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in particular, have talked about the link with agriculture and the Environment Bill. These are based on principles of, first, public money for public goods and, secondly, the polluter pays. So I would be interested to hear the noble Lord’s thoughts about how those principles can be reflected in our attitude to food.

In 2014, I chaired a committee looking into the subject of food waste; it was the first time that this had ever been done, and the resulting report got attention right across the world. As a result, I was asked to speak at conferences across Europe. Inevitably, the subject of food banks came up in discussions, and it is worth reflecting on the fact that this is not just a UK problem. What struck me was the reluctance of all Governments, everywhere, to admit that some of their citizens are going hungry. No Government seem to want to admit that they are not meeting one of the basic needs of the people whom they are elected to serve—and that is the big problem because, if you do not admit that there is an issue, you will never put it right and the problem will get worse.

The Government always say they are world leading. We have not heard it today, but I have no doubt we shall in weeks to come. They could show genuine leadership in this area by acknowledging that there is a problem of food poverty. They could develop metrics to measure it and then create an action plan to deal with the worst of these problems, so that we are not debating this in 75 years’ time.

There are many immediate measures, outlined in this and in other reports, that could be taken to ameliorate the situation. Scrapping the five-week wait for universal credit, retaining the £20 uplift, reforming the scheme for paying back advances, and having another look at the free school meals system so that it does not rely on a campaign by a young footballer every time we have a school holiday—all these could be done relatively quickly and without primary legislation.

Other changes, such as reforming the food system, will take longer, but the Government could show leadership. The vaccination programme has shown us that when all the different sectors in our society—from government, through to academia, business and the charity sector—pull together, we can achieve a huge amount. This is something we could tackle.