Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Commons Chamber

The Attorney General was asked—

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

1. What steps she is taking to help ensure the effective prosecution of perpetrators of fraud and economic crime.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

4. What steps she is taking to help ensure effective prosecution of perpetrators of fraud and economic crime.

[The Solicitor General (Michael Tomlinson)]

The Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office play a critical role in bringing economic criminals to justice. Just yesterday, the SFO announced a new investigation into fraud at AOG Technics Ltd, an aircraft parts supplier. That is the third new investigation launched since Nick Ephgrave became director of the SFO.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Members of the Conservative party used the pandemic as an opportunity to make money for their friends and donors totalling £3.5 billion. When will they face justice?

[The Solicitor General]

I completely refute what the hon. Lady has said. I was looking forward to her question, but I was disappointed with the tone and substance of it. It is right to say that this Government are taking economic crime seriously, and fraud as well. I hope she has seen the new fraud strategy and, importantly, the report commissioned from Jonathan Fisher KC and his review on disclosure, which is due out next summer.

Combined Sewer Overflows

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

Unlimited penalties are available to the Environment Agency and there is already a criminal investigation under way. I know my hon. Friend has secured a Westminster Hall debate next week to discuss it in further detail, and my hon. Friend the water Minister will reply substantially to the many detailed points that I am sure he will raise.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It was my constituent Mr Latimer who was responsible for the law change stating that sewage should only be discharged during exceptional circumstances. He knows, as we all know, that it is this Government who are actively enabling the water companies and regulators to get away with dumping sewage into our rivers and our oceans. Why will the Secretary of State not admit that under this Government, sewage dumping is no longer the exception but the rule?

[Dr Coffey]

Because the hon. Lady’s assertion is simply not true.

Sewage Pollution

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are mindful of the impacts on bills. The average increase in bills with the measures we outlined—the £56 billion package—will be about £12 per household per year by around 2030. However, we have said that we will review this in 2027, and if it is possible to accelerate more of that investment, we will do so and the Government at that time can consider that position. I repeat that it is not the case that nothing is happening until 2035; indeed, we are spending more than £3 billion out to 2025, which will lead to a 25% reduction.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I have repeatedly raised the issue of sewage dumping on the beach in my constituency in this Chamber. The Government continually use the excuse that it would cost up to £660 billion to upgrade our sewers, but the actual cost, over 10 years, would be £21.7 billion. Since privatisation, £72 billion has been paid out in dividends, so why are the Government not making the water companies meet these costs?

[George Eustice]

We also published and laid before the House yesterday a report required under the Act on the feasibility of removing the storm overflows altogether. It is the case that the cost of completely removing them, as the hon. Lady would like, is up to about £600 billion. Reducing their use so that they are not used in an average year would, in itself, be in the region of £200 billion. We have chosen to spend £56 billion, a significant investment, to target the most harmful sewer discharges, and that will lead to significant change in the years ahead.

Sewage Pollution: Whitburn

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

My constituent Mr Latimer has been raising concerns about raw sewage dumping at the Whitburn end of Seaburn beach and into the North sea for two decades. In October 2012, before I was his MP, the European Court of Justice found that raw sewage was being dumped at this location and that the United Kingdom had failed to fulfil its obligations and breached standards for treating wastewater.

In 2020, eight years later, the ECJ found again that the levels of sewage dumping at Whitburn continued to breach standards. As the sewage flows, our gorgeous beach is continually damaged. The wildlife and sea life that once inhabited our rock pools is disappearing. Dolphins and seals, regulars on our coastline, now swim through sewage soup and the seagrass meadows in the nearby River Tyne estuary are being ruined.

Mr Latimer is now supported by the Whitburn residents forum, and nearly 1,000 residents have signed our petition to stop this sewage dumping. In the nine years that I have been the MP for South Shields and part of this campaign, I have seen us stonewalled by various Departments, bodies, companies, Secretaries of State and Ministers who claim this sewage dumping is a figment of our imagination. It is not. We know that, because we live there.

We all know that this Government are not really committed to protecting our water and seas after their shameful behaviour last week, voting in favour of sewage dumping into our waterways and oceans. The Minister claimed that this was due to costs of up to £660 billion associated with upgrading our sewers—costs that today have been discounted via a leaked report from the storm overflows taskforce, which found that the actual costs, spread over 10 years, would be £21.7 billion. I am aware that the Minister was concerned that the cost would fall to consumers, but since the industry has paid its shareholders in excess of £50 billion over the last three decades, it would make sense for the water companies to meet the costs.

This week’s U-turn on the matter will not fool anyone. It is a disingenuous attempt to appease the public. If the Government really did care about sewage dumping, why have they sat back while knowing that Whitburn is continually being blighted—

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Scott Mann.)

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

After the judgment in 2012, the UK was given five years to correct the situation. The correctional work was completed by the end of December 2017. In those years, I continued to correspond with various Secretaries of State regarding my constituents’ concerns and requests for information. I was advised that Mr Latimer’s requests, via me, had become repetitive and created an unreasonable burden on the resources of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency. It was then decided that no further requests or queries would be responded to. Of course the requests have been repetitive; it is because answers and solutions have never been forthcoming.

In January 2019, our hardworking and effective MEP, Jude Kirton-Darling, raised the matter again with the European Parliament. Guess what? It found that the UK was still in breach, and sewage continued to harm our beach at Whitburn and our sea life. It asked yet again that the United Kingdom fully comply with the 2012 ruling and explain what action it intended on taking within two months. It appears that the Government never bothered replying and never took steps to halt the sewage discharges.

In early 2020, I raised the matter yet again with yet another Secretary of State, eight years after the initial request to rectify the problem. I was advised that DEFRA does not believe there are problems with the sewage system at Whitburn and that the beach was classified as “Excellent”. Now, everything in South Shields is excellent, but that definitely does not mean that sewage is not being dumped on that beach. By October 2020, a further letter from the EU confirmed that new evidence showed that, both in terms of frequency and quantity, dumping levels continued to be breached, reaching almost 53 tonnes of sewage in the first six months of the year. As a result, it also confirmed that it was commencing infringement proceedings.

And so it went on, with more meetings and more correspondence. The Environment Agency, Northumbrian Water and the Government all dispute the findings. It is a bureaucratic nightmare, where everyone has a different version of the levels of sewage being dumped, everyone continues to claim that it is not up to them to sort it out, and no one seems able to provide any update at all on the infringement proceedings. I, my team and my constituents are exhausted and angry. This obstinance has to stop. I cannot imagine the cost to the public purse of these years of avoidance. We—the people who actually live in South Shields and use Whitburn beach—know that sewage is being dumped there. We see the damage that it is doing to our coastline.

In the Environment Bill debate last week, the Minister said:

“The Government are absolutely committed to reducing sewage in our water. Nobody thinks sewage in water is a good idea, and I hope we have demonstrated that we have been very strong on that.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2021; Vol. 701, c. 865.]

Today I am pleading with the Minister to do once and for all what her predecessors have refused to, and outline what steps she is going to take to clean up our beach. That is the only way truly to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to and strength on this matter.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see you in the Chair. I thank the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for securing this debate on sewage pollution. Sewage is obviously quite a topic this week. I do not know whether securing this debate was a coincidence, but it is certainly the subject in which we have all been much immersed. Water quality is a Government priority and it has been one of my personal priorities since becoming the Environment Minister.

I want to get something very clear at the outset, as there were some somewhat aggressive comments right at the beginning of the hon. Member’s speech. This Government are totally committed to protecting the environment—that is why we are bringing forward the Environment Bill, a landmark piece of legislation—and totally committed to protecting our seas. Spurious comments made about the Government voting to allow raw sewage into the sea are completely inaccurate, as has now been pointed out on many fronts.

A really aggressive social media campaign is being run on this, to the detriment of many MPs, including death threats. We all need to act with a little more kindness and respect in this Chamber. We voted for six pages of measures in the Environment Bill when I was here last week at the Dispatch Box, and they are all things that will prevent raw sewage from going into the sea.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I would like to correct some of the Minister’s points. I was not aggressive; I was stating facts. I am very disappointed that people have had death threats, and of course I would not condone that. I was simply relaying facts and what happened in last week’s votes. If the Government were confident about last week’s votes, why on earth have they U-turned?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for that. There has been no U-turn whatever. As I said, we have six pages of clauses in the Environment Bill committing to reducing sewage in our watercourses, all with essential steps that we have to take in order to fully tackle this whole issue. We have now announced a legal duty on water companies to take action to reduce harm from overflows. I am going to outline all the overall measures that we are dedicated to in this Government. There has been no U-turn whatever. Again, that is spurious spinning of the facts. I want to get that on the record.

I will talk a little about the sewer systems, to get all that clear. Many of our sewer systems are combined systems where sewage is combined with rainwater. During and after heavy and prolonged rain, the capacity of combined sewer systems can be exceeded. Storm overflows were a design feature of the Victorian sewers. They act as a release valve to discharge excess sewage in rainwater into the rivers and the sea if the capacity of the sewage system is exceeded. This protects properties from flooding and from sewage backing up in these kinds of extreme weather. Historically, they were designed only to be used in very infrequent, exceptional weather, but water companies are now relying on them far too often. Water companies have failed to adequately reduce sewage discharges. That is unacceptable, and I have said so unequivocally. That is why we are taking action, particularly through the Environment Bill.

I want to lay out the sources of pollution that we are dealing with in our rivers and marine spaces. The largest contributor to water pollution is agriculture—that is, 40% of pollution—and the water industry accounts for 36% of water pollution. Of that, a fifth is from the storm sewage overflows, but four fifths is from water that is already treated in treatment works and goes into the river. A lot of that contains too much phosphate, for example, which is one of the things polluting our rivers. That is just to get this into perspective.

Clearly, action is necessary to tackle the issue on all fronts. That is why we are asking the water industry to do so much more on the environment. However, I want to put on the record that investment in this area since privatisation has been over £30 billion, so the water industry has actually invested a lot of money since 1990. Some £3.1 billion is being invested in storm overflows between 2020 and 2025. But to tackle the increasing pressures on our water environment, we really do need to do more. Reducing the frequency of the use of the storm sewage discharges is really important. On those grounds, I recently set up the storm overflow taskforce, which was tasked with a whole lot of assessments but also reporting back on what the cost of total elimination of the storm overflow outflows would be, as well as on a range of other combinations in reducing their use.

I want to take issue again with the stats. Nobody gave spurious statistics about this. The taskforce’s report is shortly to be published. I will share some stats with the hon. Member as she raised the issue and we need to get the record straight on that as well.

To reduce these overflows to zero, the taskforce has come back after much research to say that the cost would be between £150 billion and £300 billion. That would be done through increasing the size of the infrastructure, but there would still probably be some use of the overflows if we have massive storms. If we then wanted to completely separate our system so that we had one pipe for rainwater and one pipe for sewage, the taskforce estimate, after much research, that that would cost between £350 billion and £600 billion. The hon. Lady will be able to see that data clearly published, potentially tomorrow. We are happy to share that data with her just to get that really clear.

I have referred to some of the other measures that we are implementing to show we are determined as a Government to tackle the issue. We have set a new set of strategic priorities for the industry’s regulator, Ofwat. It is the first time any Government have set the direction in which water companies must take steps to significantly reduce the frequency and volume of sewage discharges from storm overflows. The regulator should ensure that funding should be approved to let the water companies do that. That is a really important point. As the Environment Secretary set out yesterday, we will now put that instruction on a firm legal footing. So no U-turns have occurred; this work was all in train. That direction will be enshrined in law.

I will just look in detail at the comprehensive measures we already voted for last week in the Environment Bill, which demonstrate we mean business on tackling storm sewage overflows. Together with the legal duty, the direction to Ofwat and the targets that will be set on water quality, the Bill will make a significant difference. Last week, on 20 October, the Government put forward six pages of new law on this issue, of which the hon. Member should be completely aware. Just in case she is not, I will run through what those things were.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The Minister is being very generous. I am fully aware of what is in the Environment Bill. This debate this evening is about a particular issue that has been ongoing in my constituency for more than 20 years. I was hoping that the Minister would come here tonight to discuss that, not what the Government are going to do in the future. She is already aware of the problems at Whitburn; we have corresponded about it repeatedly. I would like to know what action will be taken for me and my constituents, because this problem is ruining our beach and has been for decades.

[Rebecca Pow]

I am very well aware of that, but it was the hon. Member who started on all these other, much wider areas, so I thought I would set the record straight. The point is—I will get to her area—that all these measures should and will make a difference in her area. That is the point.

There is a duty on the Government to publish a plan before September 2022 to reduce sewage discharges from storm overflows, a duty on the Government to report to Parliament on implementing the plan, a duty on water companies to publish data on the storm overflow operation on an annual basis, and a duty on the Environment Agency to publish data on storm overflows from water companies.

Further amendments set clear objectives, such as a duty on water companies to report discharges occurring and ceasing in near real-time—within an hour. That should really help in the hon. Lady’s constituency, and she should be on that to make sure it happens. There is also a duty on water companies to put gadgetry up and downstream of the outflows to monitor them. Again, that will genuinely help if there is still a problem in her area.

We are looking at schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 on sustainable urban drainage and we are bringing in sewerage management plans. The water company in the hon. Lady’s area, like every water company, will now have to produce drainage and sewerage management plans so we can clearly see their power of direction and how they will reduce the use of storm overflows.

I now turn to the bit the hon. Lady has been waiting for on Whitburn. I hear what she said. My intelligence tells me that a great deal of work has been done in her area to intercept storm overflows and decrease the frequency of the discharges. I believe there is an out-to-sea discharge that is 1.5 km out.

The sewage interceptor scheme that protects the bathing waters that the hon. Lady mentioned was completed in 2017, as she said, at a cost of £10 million. The idea was to tackle any sewage discharges. The scheme includes a combination of storm water storage, removing surface water in sewers, and sustainable urban drainage systems—including, interestingly, rainwater gardens at some local schools. The stats tell us that the bathing waters have continued to receive excellent quality status, which is what we want for our bathing waters.

The stats and the intelligence that the hon. Lady has recounted tonight are contrary to the data that I have. On those grounds, I would be very happy to meet her to look at what she is saying. I am the Environment Minister and I care about water quality, so I am genuinely slightly mortified to hear that different data. Clearly, a lot of parties are involved and she seems to have engaged with many of them. I am happy to meet her, as I will any Member of Parliament who comes to me with any environmental issue that I think is not right. I will leave it there.

Question put and agreed to.

Agriculture Bill

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. Given covid-19, I want to pay my great tribute to all the health workers across the country, and also the food producers, farmers, deliverers and those who process the food to get it into our shops and to consumers. It has never been so important to have home production and good-quality food in this country. It is not only farmers and growers who want that; so do the supermarkets and other retailers and the consumers. We are all working together to deliver higher and higher standards, better welfare and better environmental conditions.

The whole raison d’être of the Bill is to move us in the direction of higher welfare and environmental standards, looking after our land and soils, holding back water and having better flood protection—all of this working together. But farming, and especially commercial farming, needs to be able to produce food and to do so competitively. As Government and Opposition Members have said, there has never been more of a need to deliver sustainable, good, affordable food in this country than there is today.

I very much support new clause 1 from my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and, naturally, new clause 2, which is in my name and the names of the EFRA Committee members. This is about having equivalence of production on imported food, so that it is WTO-compliant, and it is very much about getting very good trade deals in future. I want to see British lamb and more cheese go into America. I want to see everything being exported to America, and I am very happy to have imports from America in a new trade deal, but they cannot undercut our present production methods and animal welfare.

I will say this clearly to the Americans: if we look at American poultry production, we see that they use chlorine wash for about 25% or 30% of that—for the lower end of their production, where the chickens are more densely populated and there are much poorer welfare and environmental conditions—to literally clean it up so that is safe to eat, and of course, in doing that, they reduce the cost of production, but they also reduce the welfare of that poultry. I would say clearly to the Secretary of State for International Trade that she should spend her time going out and dealing with a trade deal that has equivalence and making sure that we export our very important animal and environmental welfare. And I would say to the Americans, “Why don’t you upgrade your production? Why don’t you reduce the density and population of your chickens? Why do you not reduce the amount of antibiotics that you are using, and then you will produce better chicken not only for America: it can also come into this country?”

Let us not be frightened of putting clauses into the Bill that protect us, with the great environmental and welfare standards that we want the whole Bill to have, and that farmers want to have. I think we all accept that the common agricultural policy has not been a huge success. Therefore, we can devise a better Agriculture—and food—Bill, and that is what we have to remember: agriculture is about food, and it has never been more important than now to have high-quality food. If I get the opportunity, I will most definitely push new clause 2 to a Division and I will most definitely support new clause 1. There are also Opposition new clauses that I am also prepared to look at, because I think we have to make this Bill good. It is no good being told, “Don’t put it in the Agriculture Bill; put it in the Trade Bill.” When we try to put it in the Trade Bill, it will be out of scope. We are being led down the garden path—we really are —and it is time for us to stand up and be counted.

I want great trade deals. I am not a little Englander who will defend our agriculture against all imports—quite the reverse. I think competition is good, but on a level playing field that allows us to produce great food and allows our consumers to have great food, and makes sure that we deliver good agriculture and environment for the future.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]]

I would like to speak to amendments 23 to 25 and record my support for new clause 7. That I am speaking to these amendments should come as no surprise to the House since they are the contents of my Food Insecurity Bill.

Since 2017, I have been pleading with the Government to introduce a simple, cost-neutral measurement of food insecurity into the household surveys that they already conduct. Each time hunger is raised in this place, various Secretaries of State and Ministers have denigrated statistics from charities, researchers, food banks and colleagues, claiming that the figures are not robust enough or that the information is not reliable enough to inform Government policy. Denying the accuracy of the data or simply turning a blind eye allows them to pretend that the problem does not exist, but it does, and it is only by knowing the true scale of UK hunger that we can start to mitigate it.

When I introduced my Bill, the United Nations had estimated that 8 million people in the UK were food insecure—that is 8 million people who could not afford to eat and who did not know where their next meal was coming from. More than 2,000 food banks that we know of have become an embedded part of our welfare state and are the only port of call for those experiencing the harsh and unforgiving welfare state cultivated by this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

We do want to see an end to live exports, and we will soon be consulting on measures to improve the welfare of live animals in transport. We hope that ultimately the effect of this will be an end to live exports overseas.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

My constituent, Mr Latimer, after exhausting every avenue to halt the flow of sewage on to the beach behind his very popular restaurant, ended up filing a complaint with the European Commission. The ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that the Government needed to rectify the problem within five years. That was eight years ago. Can he expect any action from this Government?

[Theresa Villiers]

I am certainly happy to look into that case and come back to the hon. Member.

Agriculture Bill

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The United Nations estimates that over 8 million people in the United Kingdom suffer food insecurity—over 8 million people who are unable to afford to eat or who worry where their next meal will come from. I am astounded that we have been presented with an Agriculture Bill, which should have food at its heart, that contains nothing to address the growing levels of desperate hunger in the UK on this Government’s watch.

Any Bill concerning agricultural markets and our food chain should also address the end of the food supply chain: consumers and, more importantly, the impact of food insecurity on them. Globally, there have been predictions that we are heading for a serious food shortage as early as 2027. As populations rise, conflicts spread and more extreme weather affects food supplies, it is clear that food insecurity will become an even more important issue.

The all-party parliamentary group on hunger, of which I am a member, has taken a deep look at the growing issue of UK hunger. Over recent years, we have found that austerity, punitive welfare reforms, benefit cuts, and inaction on low pay and insecure work, as well as the widening gulf between incomes and the cost of living, are the main drivers of UK hunger. We also found that 3 million children are at risk of hunger during the school holidays and that 1.3 million malnourished older people were

“withering away in their own homes”.

I have received answers to parliamentary questions showing that rising levels of hospital admissions for adults and children because of malnutrition are costing the NHS £12 billion per year. We now have approximately 2,000 food banks—that we know of—and evidence has shown time and again that food-bank use alone is an indication of last resort. There are legions of hidden hungry who do not go to food banks and do not ask for help, either out of shame or embarrassment, or because they do not know where to go.

Each time that I have raised the issue of hunger in the House, various Secretaries of State and Ministers have denigrated statistics from charities, researchers, food banks and colleagues, claiming that the figures are not robust enough, or that the information is not reliable enough to inform Government policy. Denying the accuracy of the data or simply turning a blind eye allows them to pretend that the problem does not exist, but it does.

This is where my Food Insecurity Bill comes in. All I am asking is for the Government to replace redundant questions in an existing UK-wide representative survey—such as the living costs and food survey that they already conduct—with questions pertaining to hunger, and place the results before the House on an annual basis. The Bill is therefore cost-neutral and will give a true, robust and reliable measurement of UK hunger. It is backed by more than 150 MPs from all parties, dozens of peers, 30 organisations and 77% of the public. The cross-party all-party parliamentary group on hunger and the cross-party Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have also advocated such a measurement.

Despite all that support and repeated correspondence with the Minister of State, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, the Government remain dogged in their determination not to implement my Bill. I hope that today the Secretary of State will see the merit in adding the asks of my Bill into this Bill. In a country as rich as ours, no one at all should go to bed hungry and wake up hungry. The fact that so many people do is an abject failure of this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We are looking forward to discussing this in Committee and looking sympathetically on well-made cases.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The Department’s own family food survey found that even when poorer households buy cheaper food, they still spend a higher proportion of their income on it than average households, because of low wages. Does the Secretary of State still stand by his patronising comments that poorer people find “solace” in eating cheap junk food?

[Michael Gove]

My comments to the all-party parliamentary environment group, which were inspired by a very good question from the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), were explicitly designed to say that we should not patronise or judge people on poorer incomes for the choices they make. I know that the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) is very busy, but had she been there she would have had a better understanding of the context in which those comments were made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Not only do we hope to introduce legislation to improve the courts’ powers and access to additional sentencing sanctions for those who are responsible for acts of horrific animal cruelty, but we also want, as was confirmed by the Lords Minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union last night, to introduce legislation to ensure that the principle of animal sentience is recognised and, indeed, enhanced after we leave the EU.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T7. My Food Insecurity Bill contains a cost-neutral proposal to measure UK hunger. It is supported by 77% of the public, over 100 MPs across the House, two cross-party groups and more than 20 organisations, but it is not supported by the Government. Why?

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady knows why, because I met with her to explain it. The work is already being done. A Food Standards Agency food survey asks exactly the questions proposed in her Bill, and we also have the annual living costs and food survey.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

I have already replied to the right hon. Gentleman about this point through answers to written questions. The Environment Agency has traced the waste oil to a potential polluter, but I cannot give further details due to the ongoing investigation. I assure him that the Environment Agency carries out pollution prevention visits at industrial premises along that area and, of course, we are still working to clean it up.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Last week’s Brexit paper referred to the availability of food, but made zero reference to the scandal that one in 12 British adults had gone a whole day without it. Why do the Government not care about people going hungry?

[George Eustice]

We do care about people going hungry. We have a number of initiatives to support food banks and ensure that food is redistributed. We are also reforming and improving the benefits system to help people back into work, which is obviously the best option.