Poverty: Food Costs

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing this debate. I am also grateful, as ever, for briefings from Sustain and the National Farmers’ Union, among others.

The rise in food poverty and the emergence of food banks is one of the most shameful and baleful consequences of 13 years of Conservative Government. In 2010-11, the Trussell Trust was operating 35 food banks; last year, it was 1,400. While we all applaud its work and we are extraordinarily grateful to our local food banks—I pay tribute to the volunteers and supporters in my city of Cambridge—our goal must be to put food banks out of business by ensuring that they are no longer needed. Let us be clear: although there are unwelcome shortages on supermarket shelves, the issue with food poverty is a money problem, not a food problem. There is enough food in our communities, but not everyone has enough money to access it. That is the problem that needs to be resolved. I would like to hear from the Minister just what discussions he has had with colleagues on how they intend to tackle this problem.

We have had some powerful contributions to the debate, particularly from my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) and for Putney (Fleur Anderson. We should indeed be angry about how our country has got to this state. It increasingly feels like a country drowning in a worsening cost of living crisis, high inflation, rising food prices and stagnating growth. Up and down the country, too many of our constituents are suffering constant anxiety about how they will make ends meet. We heard this week that energy bills will continue to rise in the coming year, which combined with wages failing to keep up with inflation means that people will be poorer. That means less for essentials, including food.

The figures from the Food Foundation make grim reading. In April 2022, 7.3 million people, including 2.6 million children, were in food poverty across the UK. Data out today, again from the Food Foundation, shows that the number of households where children are experiencing food insecurity has nearly doubled in the past year. In January 2023, 21.6% of households with children reported that their children had directly experienced food insecurity in the past month—an estimated 3.7 million children—compared with 11.6% the previous January.

Another clear indicator that people are suffering food poverty is the rising number of people who are turning to food banks. In 2021-22, the Trussell Trust supplied 2.2 million three-day emergency food parcels to food bank users. It is expected that the next annual figures will show a marked increase. That is a view supported by November’s data from the Trussell Trust, which shows that 1.3 million emergency food parcels had been provided to people in the six months between April and September 2022, a third more than during the same period in 2021.

It just goes on: the latest ONS figures, released just two weeks ago, showed inflation of food and non-alcoholic drink prices—up 16.8% in the year to January 2023. The consequences are severe. In January and February, more than four in 10 adults said they had to spend more than usual in the previous two weeks to get what they normally buy when food shopping. In November and December, about one in seven adults said that in the previous two weeks they had been worried about running out of food before they had money to buy more. That rose to one in four adults with dependent children, and 29% for adults living in the most deprived area in England.

I am afraid that everything is going in the wrong direction and I ask the Minister to reflect on why that is the case. What has gone so wrong over the last 13 years to cause such a surge in food bank use? When does he think we will no longer need food banks—or are they a permanent feature for the Conservatives? There are some practical things the Government could do. Just why did they pull the funding for FareShare after its successful trial to tackle food waste? That scheme helped to cover the extra costs to small-scale farmers, growers and producers of redistributing their good-to-eat waste food rather than letting it go to waste. The trial resulted in 85% more fruit and vegetables reaching frontline charities and community groups. The Government funding ended in 2020 and, despite widespread calls, has not been continued. Why not, and why have the Government been so parsimonious when it comes to the suppliers of school meals, which face endlessly rising costs but have to try to provide nutritious meals with only a few extra pence?

Much more could be said, but I am conscious that this is a short debate. Disgracefully, we now live in a country where food poverty has become endemic. It is a record of which the Conservatives should be ashamed.

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing the debate. Given the time restrictions, it will be difficult for me to respond to all the points that have been made, but I will start by recognising the impact that high food prices are having on household budgets.

High food prices are a result of many different factors, including agrifood import prices, domestic agricultural prices, domestic labour and manufacturing costs, the exchange rate for sterling—and not least, of course, Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine and the aftershocks of the pandemic, which are having a global impact, with food prices rising at home and abroad. Other countries are experiencing high food price inflation, with 16% being recorded in the euro area in December last year. Rising food prices are a big contributor to the high levels of inflation that people are currently experiencing. However, we have seen a slight fall in the official food price inflation figures for January. We will continue to watch and monitor the situation as food price inflation continues to move around.

Given the impact of high food prices, tackling inflation is the Government’s No. 1 priority. We plan to more than halve inflation this year, and we are monitoring all key agricultural commodities so that we can work with the food industry to address the challenges that it faces. Low-income households are most affected by high food and energy prices, which is why we have provided a package of support to help people with rising food costs. The Government have already committed £37 billion to support households with the current exceptionally high cost of living, £1 billion of which has gone towards help with the cost of household essentials.

Looking forward to April, the Government will uprate benefit rates and the state pension by 10.1%. The benefit cap levels will increase by the same amount in order to increase the number of households that can benefit from these uprating decisions. In addition, for 2023-24, households on eligible means-tested benefits will get up to £900 in cost of living payments, which will be split in three payments of about £300 across the 2023-24 financial year. A separate £300 payment will be made to pensioner households on top of their winter fuel payment, and individuals in receipt of eligible disability benefit will receive a £150 payment.

In order to better understand who is currently experiencing food poverty, we introduced a set of questions into the family resources survey to measure and track food bank use from April 2021. The first results of those questions are due to be published very soon, subject to the usual quality assurances.

The Government spend around £1 billion annually on free school meals, and protections are in place to ensure that eligible pupils keep their free school meal entitlement even if their household circumstances change. The end date for that has now been extended to March 2025. The latest figures from the Department for Education show that around 1.9 million pupils are claiming free schools meals, which equates to 22.5% of all pupils, up from 20.8% in 2021.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Will the Minister address the pressures on school meal providers, which have faced hugely increased costs and have had little extra help to provide nutritious food?

[Mark Spencer]

Of course, we recognise that there are cost pressures throughout the whole food supply chain. That is why the Government are offering huge amounts of support to households to try to cope with that. However, we acknowledge that there are challenges—not just in schools but in the Prison Service, the NHS and many Government Departments. That is why we need to address inflation, which is one of the Government’s highest priorities.

We continue to work with food retailers and producers to explore a range of measures that they can take to ensure the availability and affordability of food. It would be remiss of me not to mention the recent issues that we have experienced with the supply of certain fruit and vegetables to supermarkets in the UK. We are continuing to engage with industry throughout this period, and I hosted a roundtable with retailers this week to explore with them their contractual models, plans to return to normal supplies and contingencies for dealing with supply-chain challenges. I have also asked them to look again at how they work with our farmers and how they buy fruit and vegetables so that they can further prepare for these unexpected incidents. In the meantime, I reassure hon. Members that the UK has a highly resilient food supply chain, which was demonstrated during the covid-19 response. It is well equipped to deal with situations with a potential to cause disruption.

I want to address the comments made by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). He tried to divide the House this evening on the statutory instrument that provides funding for ELMS. That is a real disappointment and a misunderstanding of the challenges that we face. In effect, he tried to keep English farmers tied to the EU’s bureaucratic and tiresome common agricultural policy by trying to shout down that legislation.