Children’s Future Food Report

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Children’s Future Food report.

My sentiment differs from that expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) when he was winding up our previous debate on co-operatives and mutuals. He talked, naturally, of his huge pride and pleasure in contributing to that debate, but few Members will rise with pride or pleasure to contribute to this one. This is a very necessary debate, but it is not, I hope, one in which we, as a House of Commons or as a country, can take much pleasure.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling the debate so that we can properly consider and debate the report, and press the Minister on the Government’s response to the report’s important recommendations. In doing so, it is worth our remembering that hunger in this country did not feature as a topic in our debates prior to 2012, so today we are debating something that has happened very quickly in our society. We are considering how the bottom of our society has fallen out, and how those at the very bottom have been subjected to not only hunger, but destitution. Obviously there are reasons for that, although they are not the point of today’s debate. When George Osborne, the then Chancellor, moved to try to prevent the opening up of our markets to much increased international competition by introducing a living wage, it was an important way of trying to counter the collapse of certainties and standards for the poorest people in our communities. Of course, we know that employers try to get round the living wage in various ways, such as through the gig economy. However, I hope that the Government will soon look seriously and carefully at their role in the hunger we are debating today.

We have had a series of cuts—four years in total—to the income of people on benefits. That had never, ever happened before since the beginning of the welfare state between 1909 and 1911. This is an immensely important issue, and in the review of public expenditure, we expect Ministers to fight very hard for the idea that those who have paid most will be at the front of the queue for future payouts.

It is with real pleasure that I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) for co-chairing the inquiry that led to the report. It is also appropriate to thank not only those who made sure we had a report to consider, but the Food Foundation, which is led by Laura Sandys, who was until recently a Member of this House, for its work in raising the whole issue of hunger and destitution. The report not only does that, but makes practical proposals for what we might do about the situation. Likewise, I wish to thank the hundreds of children and young people who contributed to the inquiry, particularly those young people who, with their co-interviewees, not only brought about a report for us, but are continuing the work by becoming ambassadors on this big issue.

Let us recall how new a topic hunger, including school hunger, and the destitution that follows it is for the House of Commons. If we look at the index of our work—our parliamentary questions and debates—we see that there was not much to be said about the issue before 2012. At that point, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, was asked about it, given that that same week, the Trussell Trust had said that unless the Government took action, the number of people who would be drawing on food banks would double between then and 2015, when the next general election was due. I asked him to take action that day, and while he did not do so, MPs did by forming an all-party group to look at the extent of hunger around the country and to collect evidence. In what I believe was a first, a group of MPs then formed a charity, Feeding Britain, to take the work forward. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), I helped to form that charity in 2015. Part of what we are debating today is the work of Feeding Britain. Let me draw attention to my constituency, where we were among the first—we may have been the first—to try to deal with the shocking situation of children being hungry. The work was specifically about the situation during the school holidays, but its brief widened all too quickly.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his speech thus far—it is impossible to disagree with a single point of it. In recent months, my constituency, which has traditionally been seen as a relatively well-off part of London, has seen real evidence of hunger, with people needing our food bank and now school hunger projects. Has he looked at the low take-up of Healthy Start vouchers, which represent Government support for people on benefits with newborn children? Almost 45% of eligible people do not take those vouchers up. Does he not think there is more that the Government and the supermarkets should be doing to promote the scheme?

[Frank Field]

I am immensely grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I was not going to mention that matter, because I was not sure how many other people would raise it during the debate. It is covered by one of the report’s recommendations, and the fact that a targeted benefit is failing to reach many of the people at whom it is aimed is important. Perhaps the Minister will set out the Government’s response.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Lord Field of Birkenhead

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field]

Might not the National Farmers Union give a different answer if the Government were to address the question of how we can grow more food to feed our population? We have a huge trade deficit, and the answer must surely be to invest more. If we raise our investment in people, we will raise productivity. The push should be not to lower wages but to raise them and to raise productivity.

[Mr Thomas]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I hope that he will catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker, to enable him to make that point in more detail.

I shall return, if I may, to the concerns expressed by Mr Leniec about the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. He is also worried about the loss of sick pay that he could suffer. He has never needed it to date, but knows of others who have done so. He also shares Mr Neville’s concern about the loss of protection of the right to overtime if he should move to a different employer.

The Agricultural Wages Board continues to provide an unheralded but important service in helping to protect vulnerable people and their families, who are vital to the rural economy, from seeing their terms and conditions progressively worsen. It helps to regulate basic pay and protection for fruit pickers, farm labourers and other farm workers. It deals with wages, holiday pay, sick pay and overtime, as well as bereavement leave, holiday entitlement and rates for night work. It provides a crucial floor beneath which wages in the agricultural economy cannot fall.

Nearly 150,000 agricultural workers in England and Wales depend on the Agricultural Wages Board. Those workers play a part in maintaining the vibrancy of our rural communities. They are the unsung essential staff who support farmers in helping to keep agricultural businesses thriving. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has just suggested, they form a vital part of our food production industry, helping to ensure that we and our constituents can all enjoy healthy—and, occasionally, unhealthy—meals.

It is striking that many farmers continue to support the Agricultural Wages Board. Its presence means that they do not have to become employment specialists, and that they can instead concentrate on running their businesses. The deputy director of the Farmers Union of Wales has noted that

“the AWB is considered an important means of avoiding potential conflict and lengthy negotiations with individual staff”.