Food Security and Farming

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Wendy Morton

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered food security and farming.

I thank the Minister and my hon. Friends who are present for joining me for this rather short debate. We will cover as much ground as possible. It is a little disappointing that there is no Opposition spokesperson, and a distinct lack of people on the Opposition Benches. Why does food security matter? There is a war in Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe. There is global inflation. There are global supply chain challenges, and climate change. There is the challenge of rising prices and the cost of living. We all need food; it is a basic need. So as I said, I am very disappointed that no one from the Opposition is present.

In this place, energy security rightly is firmly on the agenda, and the Government are taking action, but I believe that we must take food security equally seriously. Food security has many dimensions, including availability, affordability, nutrition, the state of global agriculture, logistics and food safety. The journey from farm to fork has never been more complex than it can be today.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this very important debate, short though it is. With food inflation at 18%—which hits poor people particularly hard, because staple foods are going up the most, not luxury foods—does she agree that it makes no sense to take grade 1 and 2 land out of production here, only to fly in food from all around the world, increasing the carbon footprint?

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point, which I will touch on a little later.

Much of the journey from farm to fork is unknown to our constituents until they see gaps on the shelves of their local supermarket, or read of shortages in the media. Overall, we produce 61% of all the food that we need in the UK, a figure that has been broadly stable for the past 20 years. The food strategy commits to keeping it at the same level in the future. I acknowledge that the work that the Government are doing is putting significant investment into the food system, but I will challenge my good friend the Minister, who knows more about food and farming than many in this place, by saying that investment and innovation are great, but they can take time. We need to be addressing the challenge and delivering today.

The first UK food security report was published in December 2021, but I am sure that we would all agree that much has changed significantly since then, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and global energy and inflation pressures. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) alluded to, today’s figures report that food inflation is running at 19%. Many of us, when we go into our local supermarket or shop, often see that reflected in the basics that we buy, whether that is bread, milk, butter or whatever.