Oral Answers to Questions

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I have already had many such meetings with the food industry and the agricultural industry about the current situation and the pressures on those input costs. The next meeting of the UK Agricultural Partnership in Scotland will focus specifically on the issue of food security.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

The shadow Secretary of State will be pleased to hear that Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon has called for a four-nation summit, and I believe the UK Government have agreed to that, so I am pleased that that will see some progress.

National Farmers Union of Scotland president Martin Kennedy has said that the UK is on the verge of food security concerns not seen since world war two due to covid, Brexit and the war in Ukraine, with feed, food and fertiliser costs and labour shortages drastically affecting the farming and food production sectors. London School of Economics analysis shows that Brexit alone raised food prices by 6% in the past year or so. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts Brexit losses to be more than £1,250 per person, and 178 times bigger than trade deal gains, which, combined, are worth less than 50p per person. What support packages is the Secretary of State considering for the farming and food production sectors to ensure that their extra costs will not also be passed on to consumers?

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady is right: I have spoken to Mairi Gougeon of the Scottish Government, and we are going to have the next meeting of the UK Agricultural Partnership at the James Hutton Institute, which approached me to host that event, and we look forward to it. On her wider points, the truth is that after the 2016 referendum household spending on food actually went down, but food prices have always been governed principally by the price of energy and by exchange rates.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson]

The commission recognises that many social media companies have taken welcome steps towards increasing transparency around online campaigning, but it also believes that more can be done to deliver the transparency that voters expect. It has recommended that social media companies should publish information about referendum or election adverts on their platforms with standardised data about costs and targeting. It has welcomed the provisions on digital imprints in the UK Government’s Elections Bill, and it will continue to build on its good working relations with the social media companies to ensure compliance with these measures.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

In Scotland before the Scottish parliamentary elections we saw a number of campaign groups spring up using digital advertising to peddle political messages that used unincorporated association structures to hide the source of their finances. Has the Electoral Commission considered investigating the use of unincorporated associations to evade final transparency in politics?

[Christian Matheson]

The commission is well aware of this issue, but in the recent Elections Bill the Government did not propose any change in the statutory framework under which the commission operates. There is an issue over people and organisations that are not registered as political actors putting out social media posts, because the current digital imprints provisions seemingly do not apply to them. That is an issue that the commission is aware of.