National Food Strategy and Public Health

Debate between Clive Efford and Andrew Selous

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

I agree. I, too, am in very close touch with my local farmers, who as a group are one of the heroes of this piece. We need to be on the side of farmers. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) said, we need to help them to do the right thing. I think they absolutely want to do the right thing.

I do not think we realise quite how bad the food that we eat is in this country compared with the rest of Europe. It is truly shocking. This is all in the House of Lords Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee’s July 2020 report, “Hungry for change: fixing the failures in food”, and it was repeated in the national food strategy. As a country, we are an absolute outlier in the amount of highly processed food that we eat. More than half of all the food that we eat is highly processed. The figure is only 14% in France, 13% in Italy and 10% in Portugal—already cited favourably by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne). We are five times worse than Portugal in the amount of highly processed food that we eat.

Why does that matter? I will tell you why it matters, Mr Efford. In 2018, a scientist called Monteiro did a report across 19 European countries that showed that a 10% increase in the amount of highly processed food we eat leads to a 12% increase in cancers, a 12% increase in cardiovascular disease and a 21% increase in depressive symptoms. Is it any wonder that one in seven people is on antidepressants? I wonder whether that has anything to do with the food we eat. These figures are just appalling, but I think they are quite a closely guarded secret. I do not think people know about them, and it is our job to get them out there and to challenge the food companies so that they do better.

Some food companies are on a journey. For example, the Obesity Health Alliance told me that Tesco—it particularly singled Tesco out—has committed that two thirds of all that it sells will be healthy product. It is not there yet; it is on a journey, but it is starting to get this. There is a supermarket in the Netherlands called Marqt. It is only small; it has about 16 stores, I think. It has a commitment to its customers to sell only healthy food that is good for them, because that is part of its philosophy, and it makes money as well. This is possible. We do not have to be on the treadmill of selling people the wrong things, which are bad for them. Their brains do not develop properly and they cannot achieve the potential from all the God-given talents that they were created with. We really can do better.

In schools and in so many of our public institutions, we are not doing well enough. I am waiting for a meeting with the Children’s Minister—he promised at the Dispatch Box to give me a meeting—on school food standards. The campaigners at Bite Back 2030, Jamie Oliver’s foundation, have already been mentioned today. Let me quote what one of its panellists said:

“I’m racking my brain because I don’t think my school does a single healthy option”.

The campaigners at Bite Back think that the food is not as it should be in about 40% of schools; the Soil Association thinks that the figure is 60%. I do not know whether it is 40% or 60%, but it is far too many.

The mechanisms for effective monitoring of the Government’s school food standards are not good enough and they are not being observed. I have been a school governor for 20 years, and we have a lot to do. I have sat with the children and eaten school dinners with them—what I had in Studham Village school was particularly good—but the dinners are not always that good. We need to do better. Why? Because the figures are absolutely appalling. Even before children get to school, the figures are awful, and they have got worse during the pandemic.

The figure for obesity among reception-aged children went from 9.9% in 2019-20 to 14.4% in 2020-21. That is even before children get to school. By the time they leave school, two in five are above a healthy weight and a quarter are living with obesity. Obese children are more likely to become obese adults, with the associated type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease and liver disease. This stuff really matters—it is really important, and we really can do better.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central: It is not about being a killjoy; it is not about “Bah, humbug!” We should actually be incredibly positive and upbeat about the business opportunities for British farmers and food manufacturers. Good, healthy food is delicious; it is wonderful. There is so much pleasure and enjoyment to come from it. I am very upbeat and positive, not at all negative, because there are so many better, delicious foods that we could have, and so many opportunities for our farmers.

Fundamentally, this is about making the right, good and proper thing the easy and affordable thing to do. Too often, healthy food is more expensive. It need not be that way—it really need not, and it is not always the case in Europe. There are issues about giving people a little confidence in how to cook and so on. This is a big national effort. I am looking forward to the White Paper. We have a lot to do, because we are not in the right place.

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the Back Benchers for being disciplined. I would like to bring Jo Gideon back in for a couple of minutes at the end of the debate. I call Daniel Zeichner.