National Food Strategy and Public Health

Derek Thomas Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I commend my friend and colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) for securing this important debate; it is great timing, and she is quite right to talk about what is coming up, with Christmas food and what might happen afterwards.

I also want to pick up on the comments about Henry Dimbleby, who has done a brilliant piece of work, which I commend the Government for commissioning. I, too, commend Henry Dimbleby for the way that he has engaged with parliamentarians in explaining his report. He has come to the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which I serve on, and to other groups that I have an interest in, and carefully explained, in detail, what the strategy includes. It is helpful to get to meet with the person behind a strategy and see all the thinking and intelligence that has gone into it.

I would maybe encourage the hon. Member for Bristol West (Kerry McCarthy) to take the opportunity to meet Henry Dimbleby and ask some of her questions. I believe that she may have—

[Kerry McCarthy]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Derek Thomas]

Certainly, yes.

[Kerry McCarthy]

It is Bristol East. Also, I have met Henry lots of times; we talk all the time.

[Derek Thomas]

That is good to hear, but when we spoke to him about the launch of the strategy and the Government’s initial response—in fact, the Prime Minister’s response when it was sprung on him, before he had seen the report—Henry’s take was very different to what we heard earlier. His comments about meat were also certainly different from what we have heard. I hope to come on to that in a minute.

It is absolutely right that we are having this debate. I want to focus on UK food production. We have heard about the importance of the strategy and of good, nutritious food in our children and right across our population. I want to concentrate on how we actually produce that food and ensure that, in the UK, we produce absolutely as much as we possibly can, because UK food production is critical to achieving all that has been encouraged already.

A successful UK food and farming sector delivers healthy food for our nation. It delivers a reduced carbon footprint and reduced food miles. It is much easier to trace what is in our food and where it comes from when it is produced here, locally. We are much more confident about the standards of animal welfare and of the things that we put on our land to encourage our crops to grow. We are obviously all committed to reducing food miles, so whatever we and the Government can do to support the food and farming sector in the UK can only help to deliver the important things that are in the strategy and have been rehearsed this morning.

Action is needed; I will run through a few points about how it is needed, I believe urgently. Take labour, for example. We have seen in the last couple of years—for various reasons that we do not necessarily need to go into—a real reduction in the individuals to harvest crops, and now to even put them in the ground. That is certainly our experience in Cornwall, and I know it is experienced elsewhere. For the whole of the year, I and others have been encouraging the Government to get on with reintroducing or renewing the seasonal agricultural workers scheme pilot—as it is being at the moment. We have also argued that it be extended to allow for more things to be harvested and sown.

Despite working on this for the whole year, and given that it should start on 1 January, we heard for the first time only yesterday morning at our Select Committee that the Government will continue with the pilot. It sounds as if the Government have listened to what we have said, and they have extended the scheme through to 2024. This gives farmers much more confidence in planning their food production and harvesting. If the Government were really committed to our food and farming sector, they would not leave it right until the end of the year before telling the industry what the arrangements are for the following year—that is not as good as it could be. I encourage the Minister to take the message back, if they have not already heard it, about the importance of moving much more quickly to support farmers and give them clarity about what they need to do and plan for.

I welcome the Minister to her place; I have not had the opportunity to do so since she was moved. I commend her for her work in the Department of Health and Social Care and now the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. There is definitely a desire in the UK to move from relying on people from abroad to sow and harvest our food; however, we do not spend much time in schools introducing our children to how their food is produced. In our primary and secondary schools, we need to work with children to get them to understand, not just how important it is to have a healthy and nutritious diet and how that can be put together, but how our food is actually produced.

We need to teach our children that there are opportunities to work in food and farming, and that they can have a successful, satisfying and rewarding career working in that industry. The value of that has been lost over recent generations. I encourage the Minister to comment on how the Department for Education, DEFRA, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Work and Pensions and even the Home Office—bizarrely—are all working together to make sure that we really encourage our own people to see food and farming as a rich and enjoyable career.

With the environmental land management scheme, we will be able to direct, encourage and nurture good food production with Government support. As we know, previously—and still—food and farming was supported through the common agricultural policy, which favoured the size of the asset rather than what was produced. ELMS is much more about how we care for the environment, how we produce the food we need and how we reward public money with public good. I would encourage the Minister to make sure that ELMS delivers as intended—and on time. There is some concern about the delays, and there is encouragement to delay; I absolutely do not agree that we should. I would appreciate it if the Minister took away from this debate the need to get on top of ELMS and ensure that it helps to produce the food that we all need—including our children.

We need to support innovation. On ensuring that we have the food we need, for example, automation is absolutely needed, but we are a long way off from making that work and understanding how it can help us. We can produce so much more with indoor growing systems, but that must be done in a renewable and sustainable way. My first debate in this Chamber in 2016 was on food security. I argued then that we needed a way of clearly demonstrating that food was produced locally and sustainably—some form of British flag or kitemark. At that point, £2.4 billion of public money was spent on procuring food. I do not believe that we have made much progress since on ensuring that as much of the food as possible that goes into our children in schools, into people in hospitals and prisons, and into public sector offices is British-produced. The Government have always indicated that they want to do that. Now that we have left the EU, the Government have a real opportunity to favour British food in all public sector procurement, including schools.

I have supported some work in Cornwall, where food that would otherwise go to waste is made into healthy, nutritious meals and go to those who need it. There is a real demand for it across the country. I understand that food waste alone accounts for about 10% of our carbon emissions. We could address that and provide food for the people who most need it, as the hon. Member for Bristol East rightly stressed, so we should look at how we can ensure that surplus food goes to the right people.

On free school meals, the arrangement at the time was £15 per child per week, but there was no control over how that £15 was spent. Bizarrely, we have talked about how we want children to have good, nutritious food with low salt and sugar content, but if we just give a family £15 a week per child, there is no way to manage or control that. Delivering healthy and nutritious food boxes to families is far better, and the schools and communities that I worked with preferred that, but I appreciate that it was a bit of an untidy affair. We did not handle it very well, but it is the case that Cornwall Council has received £5 million this winter to help families with food and other support. It is fair to true to say that the families in the most difficult situations today are able to get support and help with nutritious food, if it is organised and managed properly. I encourage all local authorities to ensure that that continues to be a priority.

How do we balance all these things together? Sometimes we talk about the need to tackle climate change as though it is in competition with food production or levelling up, but I believe they can all complement each other. Supporting the British food sector to move towards a more climate-friendly approach, which it is able and willing to do, would help to produce the food that our nation needs.