Food Price Inflation and Food Banks

Debate between Beth Winter and Ian Byrne

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Beth Winter]

Yes, I am very aware of those people. I work closely with food banks in my community, as I know other Members do, so I know that there has been a significant increase in the number of people in work who are accessing food banks, which is completely unacceptable. It is unacceptable for anybody to be using them.

Why are prices going up? We have to be clear that there are multiple causes. Droughts, climate disaster, fuel costs and the Ukraine war have all had an impact. However, as Unite the union has set out in real detail in its research on profiteering, which looks at the profits of companies in the FTSE 350, all of this has been made worse by profiteering along global supply chains, from agribusiness multinationals to high street supermarkets. It is not just Unite saying that. The European Central Bank recently said:

“Profit growth remained very strong, which suggested that the pass-through of higher costs to higher selling prices remained robust.”

The top eight UK food manufacturers made profits of £22.9 billion in 2021, with both profits and margins up 21% on 2019, with Nestlé, Mondelēz and Unilever all benefiting from double-digit growth in profit margins. In the supermarket sector, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda—the top three UK supermarkets—nearly doubled their combined profits to £3.2 billion in 2021 compared with 2019.

Supermarkets are turning over hundreds of millions of pounds and handing dividend payments to wealthy investors, who are obviously not the people struggling to eat. In 2021-22, a total of £704 million was paid by Tesco in dividends and last July the company also paid shareholders £1 billion in its share buyback scheme.

The problem is that people who are reliant on low pay and social security are funding these exorbitant dividend payments and I really do not understand how the Government can justify that; I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say. People who cannot even afford to go to supermarkets are going to food banks. This is a crisis—a cost of living crisis—and it should not be allowed. We have taken action to control energy prices. When are we going to take action on the cost of food?

In Wales, where the Labour Government are in touch with ordinary people’s concerns, we are doing what we can, despite our underfunding by the UK Government. The Welsh Government are rolling out universal free school meals, which are now available in reception and years one and two, and they have a timetable to roll them out to all children in primary school. Think how much more quickly they would be rolled out in Wales if there was a fair, needs-based funding formula for central funds to the Welsh Government.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the fantastic work that she does in her community on the issue. Does she agree that the Minister should follow Wales’s lead and introduce universal free school meals? The Government should introduce a free school breakfast and lunch for all children in state education and, alongside that, enshrine a right to food in law, so that all children and adults have enforceable food rights, and we tackle the scourge of hunger in our communities.

[Beth Winter]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the sterling work that he does on the Right to Food campaign in Liverpool. I totally agree that the UK Government need to follow the Welsh Government’s lead and roll out universal free school meals to all children. I thank him for his intervention.

Universal free school meals could be rolled out across the UK if supermarkets and suppliers were not allowed to pay such enormous dividends to shareholders, and instead paid a windfall tax. Imagine that—food retailers taxed to provide free school meals. It is an obvious thing to so. Elsewhere around the world, other Governments are taking action. In France, the Government have announced an anti-inflation trimester, during which supermarkets are expected to make discounts on food that will cost them, according to the French Prime Minister, hundreds of millions of euros. That appears to be a voluntary scheme. Carrefour and Casino supermarkets have made cuts. We need more information on the scheme’s impact and the benefit for families, but I hope that the Government are watching and discussing the matter with their French counterparts. Will the Minister respond to that point? Another example is Switzerland, where food is subject to price regulation. Prices there grew at a rate of 4% in December last year, compared with nearly 12% in the US and nearly 17% in the United Kingdom. Have the Government considered how Switzerland regulates its food pricing?

Sadly, this Tory Government are not taking action. I looked at the outcomes of yesterday’s food summit, which was renamed the Farm to Fork summit—no reference whatsoever to food inflation or food poverty. I note that the union most heavily involved in the food sector and agriculture, Unite the union, and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union were not invited to the summit. Why?

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

“is to investigate how profitability and risks are shared through the food supply chain and the existing government system of monitoring and regulation of these.”

On Monday, the Competition and Markets Authority announced

“the stepping up of our work in the grocery sector to understand whether any failure in competition is contributing to grocery prices being higher than they would be in a well-functioning market.”

Will the Government commit to learning from those processes, and will they look at other Governments’ interventions in their food markets? The crisis is such that the Government must act now, even while those investigations go on.

What should the UK do? First, we must inflation-proof incomes. Many of us on the Opposition Benches have been calling for that for a long time. That means an end to the Tory low-pay agenda that cuts public sector workers’ pay in real terms. Secondly, the Government should adopt the Trussell Trust and Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s call for an essentials guarantee. That would mean an independent process to determine the level of that guarantee, ensure that universal credit meets that level, and ensure that deductions do not take it below that level.

Thirdly, we need a windfall tax on food profits for supermarkets and, where possible, suppliers. If we can have such a tax on fossil fuel suppliers, why not food suppliers? It is incumbent on the UK Government to engage with that proposal, for which they have set a precedent, given what they have done on oil and gas. The tax revenue could be used to expand the provision of free school meals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) just said. Fourthly, we need controls on food speculation, as the former shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), said in a debate yesterday. Finally, have the Government explored any mechanisms for a price ceiling on a core basket of goods? People are struggling in this cost of living crisis, and this Government are standing by as they suffer.

I will finish with some personal commentary. Prior to entering this place, I volunteered at a local food bank for a long period. It will never leave me: when I looked into the eyes of the people coming into the food bank, I saw despair, but also a sense of embarrassment and shame at having to access a food bank in the fifth-richest nation in the world. It is an absolute disgrace. The answers are there; this is a political choice. It is extremely urgent that immediate action be taken by the UK Government to resolve this issue.

Right to Food in Legislation

Debate between Beth Winter and Ian Byrne

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne]

Absolutely. I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague. That is a hugely important principle, which we should adhere to as a civilised society, and we may discuss Marcus Rashford’s petition later. Having the right to food in law would hopefully result in people having the ability to have a hot meal a day. That is why I am here today to discuss this topic.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recommended that the Government consult on whether a right to food should be given a legislative footing to ensure that the Government have a reference point for action to tackle and measure food insecurity, with the flexibility to meet that commitment using different measures. Some of the evidence from the Committee’s session was compelling. Professor Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City, University of London, told the Select Committee:

“If you do not have it in legislation, you do not have indicators and it does not happen.”

Anna Taylor, who is working with Henry Dimbleby on the national food strategy, represented the Food Foundation at the evidence session. She added:

“If we get the legal structures right, the governance arrangements are right and Parliament is involved in scrutinising those, we will not be in the situation we have now with such high levels of unmet need.”

The second part of the national food strategy being drawn up by Henry Dimbleby gives us a real opportunity to recommend the right to food, and I really hope he can be persuaded that it must be a key recommendation.

The right to food should not be seen in isolation. Having enough food for your family is part of a decent standard of living. Hunger is a symptom of broader social inequalities and rights violations, not least low-paid, insecure jobs and a broken social security system—all of which have been exposed even further by the current economic crisis under the pandemic.

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

In Wales, we are hoping to pilot the universal basic income initiative, because, as my hon. Friend has just alluded to, prevention is much better than cure in terms of food poverty. Does he endorse the recommendation of the Welsh Senedd that it is now time to introduce universal basic income so that nobody has to go without food?

[Ian Byrne]

I do endorse that call. I am a huge supporter of universal basic income. It should be looked at as one of the possible strands of the solution to what we are facing as a society. I hope the Government listen to some of the calls for universal basic income and look at different solutions. We are in extraordinary times at the moment. Universal basic income could be one of the strands of the solution, so that we do not have 9 million people who are struggling to put a meal on the table. That is hugely important.

As I said, the right to food should not be seen in isolation. We are living through extraordinary times and seeing a spotlight shone on the inequalities in society. According to the Independent Food Aid Network report, 82.7% of food banks in its sample that collected relevant data

“indicated waiting on a benefit payment or decision as one of the three most common reasons for food bank use, and 73.8% of food banks indicated interruption or reduction in benefit payments as one of the three most common reasons for food bank use.”

The solidarity shown during the covid-19 pandemic has been heartwarming, and it is one of the positives that we can draw from the period, completely at odds with the ideology of Thatcher and the infamous quote about there being “no such thing as society”. That has been exemplified in grassroots mutual aid efforts across the country, in all our communities, and we can all be proud of that. I speak with personal knowledge from Fans Supporting Food Banks, an organisation started in Liverpool five years ago and built with the magnificent efforts of football supporters from across our nation, particularly Newcastle, Leeds, Burnley, Aston Villa, Manchester United, Manchester City and West Ham. That sort of collaboration has been absolutely magnificent and has been welcome in our communities.