Sewage Pollution

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the shadow Secretary of State, Jim McMahon.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

The scenes over the summer have shown us again that the country is awash with Conservative-approved filthy raw sewage. Over the last six years, there have been over 1 million sewage discharge spill events, which on average means a spill taking place every 2.5 minutes. Just in the time that we will be in this Chamber for this urgent question, 18 sewage discharges will take place. The water companies are laughing all the way to the bank and the Government are complicit in treating our country like an open sewer, allowing raw human waste to be dumped on our beaches and playing fields and into our streams and bathing waters, where families live and holiday and where their children play.

This is the record and the legacy of a decade of decline, including from the new Prime Minister, who slashed the enforcement budget by a quarter when she was in the right hon. Gentleman’s post. There might be a new Prime Minister, but it is the same old Tories. In the Environment Secretary’s own backyard, he has subjected his constituents to 581 sewage discharges in the last year alone. The very people who voted for him and put their trust in him have been let down by him. This could have been avoided had Conservative MPs not blocked changes that would have ended sewage discharges and finally held the water companies to account.

The Government’s plan is not worth the paper it is written on. It is business as usual, giving water bosses the green light to carry out another 4.8 million discharges through to 2035. When will the Government finally step up to eliminate the dumping of raw sewage into our environment? I have a message for whoever may be in the right hon. Gentleman’s post as early as this evening: the Labour party is putting you on notice. We are taking this fight, constituency by constituency, from Cumbria to Cornwall to turn those neglected filthy brown seats into bright red.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman’s contribution is characteristically political—[Interruption.] Let me say that this is the first Government to increase monitoring so that we knew there was a problem. This is the first Government to set out a £56 billion investment plan to tackle this. No previous Government, not even Labour Governments, ever prioritised this issue in the way that we have. The hon. Gentleman mentions cuts to the Environment Agency budget, but he misunderstands how that budget works. The cost of monitoring water companies’ permits for the management of combined storm overflows is cost-recovered through the permit, and there have been no cuts to that. They can to recover those costs, and we have increased the grant in aid budget to enable them to do further enforcement action. That is why we have seen record numbers of prosecutions being brought under this Government’s watch.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the shadow Secretary of State.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given the impact covid has had on mental health and wellbeing, for many, access to the outdoors was a vital escape, but the Secretary of State will know that access is not equal. Research by Wildlife and Countryside Link highlights that the poorest communities are twice as likely to live in a neighbourhood without access to nature. What are the Government doing to ensure that every neighbourhood in every corner of England finally has access to a green and pleasant land?

[George Eustice]

We have set out some detailed proposals on this, both in our response to the Glover review, but also under the Environment Act 2021. Local authorities will be required to have local nature recovery strategies in future, and that will include commitments around public access in particular locations. We have also opened a new farming and protected landscape scheme, which is all about supporting public access to the countryside.

Government Food Strategy

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. It certainly did not take long to read.

It is now nearly a year since the publication of Henry Dimbleby’s independent review of England’s food system, a review commissioned by the Secretary of State’s Department. On the back of the review, he promised a national food strategy White Paper by January. Not only is he six months late on his own deadline, but this is just a statement of vague intentions from the Government, with no concrete proposals to tackle the major issues facing this country.

Henry Dimbleby’s review consisted of almost 300 pages, yet the Secretary of State has responded with barely 10% of that. To call this a food strategy is farcical and, frankly, an insult to all who took the time to contribute to the review. There is no need to take my word for it, as we all saw the responses over the weekend from industry leaders and those involved in the review. They are aghast at the Government’s lack of ambition, as the Secretary of State will have seen as he watched the television and read the morning newspapers over his cornflakes. This is a missed opportunity.

We should be discussing a real plan for delivery, a plan to put right the Government’s record of failure: 7.3 million people, including 2.6 million children, are living in food poverty; 2.1 million food parcels were handed out last year alone; 64% of adults are obese, as are 40% of children; £2.6 billion of trade with the EU, our biggest trading partner, has been lost; a quarter of all exports to Ireland have been lost completely; 40,000 pigs have been culled because of the labour shortage; and food is rotting in farmers’ fields because it cannot be picked.

This should have been a plan for food security and ending food bank usage by ensuring every family has access to healthy, affordable and sustainable food. It should have been a plan to back our farmers rather than undercutting them through the Government’s trade deals. It should have been a plan to drive growth through investment in new enterprises, the food and drink sector and our thriving co-operative sector. It should have been a plan to ensure that we buy, sell and make more here in Britain by supporting our fantastic producers and entrenching Britain’s reputation as a beacon for quality food, high standards and ethical animal welfare.

This should have been a plan to ensure that our schools and hospitals are stocked with more locally sourced, excellent quality food. It should have been a radical plan to tackle the obesity scandal in this country by ensuring every family has access to the healthy food that we know too many are missing, and it should have been a plan to deal with today’s supply and cost-inflation crisis.

We know, for example, that fertiliser and carbon dioxide availability has had a direct impact on the price of household staples such a bread, milk and meat products. Alarmingly, the UK’s biggest producer of fertiliser and CO₂ closed one of its plants last week because of a lack of support from this Government. The Secretary of State has been warned repeatedly, but action never follows.

Where is the plan to address the real issues facing this country today? All we see in this document is more dither, more delay and absolutely no ideas to address the scale of the challenge from a Government who are, frankly, devoid of ideas. Cruelly, there is no support for British farmers who kept this country fed during one of our most difficult times. [Interruption.] I hear the growls from Conservative Members, but what I hear most are the calls from British farmers who, for all the Government’s warm words of encouragement, are left waiting for support whenever they go to the Government for help. They wait and wait, and nothing ever comes. This is not a plan but a missed opportunity when the country can least afford it. Britain deserves better than this.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman refers to the length of my statement. I like to keep statements in this House as brief as possible, with them being a summary. I think my statement ran for about six or seven minutes, which is generally what Mr Speaker likes to see.

Clearly, if the hon. Gentleman wanted more detail, he could have read the full report, but it is clear from the list of issues he raised that perhaps he did not read it, because I simply cannot accept any of the criticisms he made. He raises the issue of obesity, and the report deals at length with it. We have already introduced a soft drinks levy that has driven reformulation. As I said in my statement, later this year we will introduce new point of sale regulations that will also drive reformulation.

The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of labour on farms. Had he read the report, he would know that we have increased the number of seasonal agricultural workers from 30,000 to 40,000, and we have worked closely with industry to understand precisely its needs. He says that we have no plan to increase spending on British agriculture by the public sector—by schools and hospitals—but we have set out a clear ambition to increase that spending by 50%. That is set out in great detail in the report.

On household spending on food, we absolutely recognise that with the sharp rise in energy bills there are households that are finding it difficult to afford food. That is why we have put in place a range of support mechanisms, the latest of which were announced by the Chancellor two weeks ago. We are talking about significant help for the most vulnerable families to help with those energy costs. We also know that although food prices have indeed risen, by about 0.2% in March and 1.5% in April, in the past 15 years or so, including during the last financial crisis, household spending on food remained fairly stable, even among the lowest income households, at about 16%.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the important issue of fertilisers, and we are aware of that. It is important to note that the Billingham plant, run by the major producer of fertiliser here, is continuing to operate and has full order books until the end of this year, and that the price of ammonium nitrate has fallen back significantly from its peak in March and is now at a level that farmers are able to purchase at.

Food Price Inflation

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make a statement on food price inflation.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

The global spike in oil and gas prices has affected the price of agricultural commodities. Agricultural commodity prices have always been closely correlated with energy costs, since gas is used to manufacture fertiliser and fuel energy is needed throughout the food chain. Gas prices were rising as we emerged from the pandemic, but the invasion of Ukraine has caused some additional turbulence in international commodity markets. I have already set out measures to support farmers and growers in England ahead of the coming growing season. Those measures are not a silver bullet, but they will help farmers to manage some of their input costs from fertilisers.

The turbulence of the market has brought into focus again the importance of a resilient global supply chain and the importance to our national resilience of having strong domestic food production. In the UK, we have a high degree of food security. We are largely self-sufficient in wheat production, growing 88% of all the wheat that we need. We are 86% self-sufficient in beef and fully self-sufficient in liquid milk, and we produce more lamb than we consume. We are also close to 100% self-sufficient in poultry. Sectors such as soft fruit have seen a trend towards greater self-sufficiency in recent years because of the extended UK season.

As part of a global market, however, there have been pressures on input costs and prices. As a result of those rising input costs, there are of course also some pressures on households, predominantly as a result of the energy costs. There have also been some rises in food prices in recent months, although the ferocity of retail competition means that price pressures have been contained on certain product lines.

In March, overall food prices rose by 0.2%; the price of fruit actually fell in March by 1.2%. In April, however, food prices rose by 1.5%, which is a faster rise than we have seen in some years. If we look at the price of specific categories of food, in April, bread and cereals rose by 2.2%; sugar, jams and syrups rose by 2%; fish rose by 2%; meat rose by 1.9%; vegetables, including potatoes, rose at a lower level of 1.3%; fruit remained broadly stable; and oils and fats decreased slightly by 1.1%.

The single most important measure of household food security and the affordability of food remains the household food survey that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has run for many decades. That shows that, among the poorest 20% of households, the amount spent on food consumption was relatively stable at around 16% of household income between 2008 and 2016. It then fell slightly to 14.5%, but with the recent price pressures, we can expect it to return to those higher levels of around 16% in the year ahead.

We are monitoring the situation. The Government have put in place an unprecedented package of support to help those who need it. That includes targeted cost of living support for households most in need through the household support fund, where the Government are providing an additional £500 million to help households with the cost of essentials.

[Jim McMahon]

I am staggered by that response. The Secretary of State speaks like a commentator or spectator on the sidelines, rather than the person responsible around the Cabinet table for food security. He seems oblivious to the cost of living crisis that people are facing. He can reel off the stats all he wants, but working people know that when they go to the supermarket, the price of almost everything they are buying is going up and up. All the Government do is spectate and commentate from the sidelines.

The Secretary of State says that the Government have made interventions, but to what end? He talks about a fertiliser shortage and an input costs crisis, but there is a fertiliser plant in the north-west that is completely closed and has been since September, and the fertiliser plant in the north-east is running at only 30% capacity. Let us also look at carbon dioxide, the labour shortage and distribution costs, and what they are doing to the cost of food.

Let us then look at the public sector. Bear in mind that the NHS serves 140 million meals a year, schools serve 600 million meals a year and prisons serve 90 million meals a year. Cost inflation has an impact on frontline services as well as on household budgets. For households, that is on top of inflation, on top of energy prices going up, on top of mortgage payments going up, on top of petrol and diesel going up, and on top of taxes going up.

What interventions have the Government actually made in practice? They have told people to ride the bus for the day to keep warm, to try to live off 30p a meal, or to just work that bit harder and they will be fine. Well, let me tell them: the number of working people in poverty is the highest since records began. Sixty-eight per cent. of people in poverty are in work. Working is not a route out of poverty after 12 years of this rotten Government.

I see it in Oldham. People who are coming for food parcels now are not in temporary crisis, but in permanent crisis. They are in debt. They are wearing NHS uniforms, coming to collect food parcels to put food on the table. But let us go from Oldham to Camborne, because I have visited the Secretary of State’s constituency. The food bank there is now giving out 10,000 meals a month—just one food bank in his constituency. It is a constant crisis. Will he commit, even at this late stage, to call an urgent cross-Government, industry and charity commission to get ahead of the food crisis? He knows that, if the Government do not get a grip by Christmas, it is going to be even worse.

[George Eustice]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not want to hear facts, but the urgent question is about food price inflation and the facts about that do matter. He is the one who wishes to spectate and commentate, rather than dealing with the facts before us. I absolutely acknowledged that food prices are rising, and faster than we have seen in recent years. Indeed, household spending among the poorest 20% may return to the levels it was when his party was last in power. However, it is also the case that, in April, overall food prices rose by 1.5%.

The hon. Gentleman asked about fertiliser prices. Here there has been more positive news this week. Fertiliser prices peaked at about £1,000 per tonne in March. This week they have fallen to about £620 per tonne—it was £290 per tonne a year ago. Farmers are purchasing at that level. He expressed concerns about carbon dioxide supply, but that is a by-product of the manufacture of ammonium nitrate, and now that the main fertiliser plants, including the one at Billingham, have reasonably full order books for the remainder of the summer and are manufacturing and selling ammonium nitrate, we do not foresee a problem when it comes to carbon dioxide.

The hon. Gentleman made a good point, which was that the cause of the pressure on household incomes has been the global spike in gas prices and the corresponding impacts on people’s energy bills—household electricity and gas bills have risen sharply. The Government have put in place some measures to try to mitigate and dampen that, but we have always been clear that we cannot remove the impact altogether. Of course, because people need to buy food every week, when there is pressure on the household budget, an inability to buy food is what they notice first, even if food prices have not changed dramatically from where they were previously.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned those in work. The Government have been very clear about that. Over the years, we have continued to raise the threshold before the lowest earners pay any tax at all and in April this year we increased the new national living wage to £9.50 an hour. Those on the lowest pay will have an additional £1,000 in their pay packets as a result.

Finally, I take this opportunity at the Dispatch Box to praise the work of Don Gardner and local volunteers, whom I meet regularly in my constituency of Camborne and Redruth. We often work in conjunction with them to help to ensure that people visiting that food bank can get access to the benefits and support that they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Thursday 28th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Britain is besieged by a cost of living crisis. Tax hikes and rocketing bills are making life harder for working people. We know that 4.7 million adults and 2.5 million children live in food poverty, 2.1 million food parcels were issued last year, and 1 million people will not eat at all today. Looking back on his nine years in the Department, what would the Secretary of State have done differently to improve rather than weaken the food security here in the UK?

[George Eustice]

Our food security, based on the amount of production we have in this country as a proportion of our consumption, has remained remarkably stable, at around 75%, for the past 22 years. Since we have left the European Union, we have had the ability to increase investment in farms and make available more grants for that, which we have done, and we have also introduced measures to improve transparency and fairness in the supply chain.

[Jim McMahon]

The Secretary of State knows that the cost of food will get much higher as farmers and producers grapple with increased costs and Government-inflicted labour shortages. As the Minister responsible for food security, will he urgently convene a cross-Government summit with the food industry, devolved and local government and charities to finally get ahead of the crisis—or are the Government once again just out for themselves, out of touch, and completely out of ideas?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It has been two weeks since I submitted this parliamentary question. Russia and Ukraine account for 29% of global wheat exports and are significant in fertiliser supply. Cereal, bread and pasta are household staples for millions of homes across this country. Even before the war in Ukraine began, we were in the midst of a supply chain and cost of living crisis, with gaps on the shelves and food left rotting in the fields. Labour has a plan to buy, make and sell more of our great British produce, but what is the Secretary of State’s plan to address our weakening food security?

[George Eustice]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, we are working on a food strategy that will address all these issues across the food supply chain and some of the other challenges around the food industry, too. On his specific question, as I have said, we are largely self-sufficient in wheat production. We import some wheat from Canada. Most of our bread manufacturers therefore have British or Canadian wheat in their bread. We have modelled the impact of the increase in commodity prices on the price of a loaf of bread, and because wheat only represents about 10% of the cost of a loaf of bread, the impact is actually quite modest. A much bigger impact is likely to be the increase in fuel costs, since the cost of delivering bread is the biggest cost they face.

[Jim McMahon]

Many food banks have raised concerns that they may face having to turn away hard-working families struggling to get by. Some have reported that donations are down as families feel the cost of living squeeze, but demand for services is rocketing. It cannot be left to charities and retailers such as the Co-operative and others to fight this alone. What will the Government do to step up and deliver food justice, especially given that this cost of living crisis originated in Downing Street?

[George Eustice]

The big drivers of household financial insecurity are energy costs, housing costs and so on, and that is why the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have already announced schemes to try to help households with the cost of energy. When it comes specifically to food, we have a household support fund worth around £500 million, and at a DEFRA level we support projects such as FareShare.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend has been a long-standing champion for fishermen in his area and the inshore sector in particular. We have introduced the under-10-metre catch app to ensure that we have more accurate data, but I should point out to him that in this current year we have also increased the amount of quota in the inshore pool by around 70%, with the additional quota that we had as a result of leaving the European Union.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

This week, I convened a roundtable discussion with leading members of our food and drinks sector. To the surprise of many, I am sure, the Prime Minister’s having his cake and eating it and stuffing suitcases full of booze were unfortunately not quite enough to sustain the industry through these difficult times.

What is clear is that the sector is struggling: the impact of inflation, the CO₂ crisis, the rocketing of feed, fuel and energy bills, and labour shortages are all increasing costs, reducing profit and ultimately pushing prices up for consumers. Those same businesses will be listening closely today. On behalf of those people, may I ask the Secretary of State what the plan is to control inflation, tackle fuel and energy costs, address labour shortages, solve the CO₂ crisis, and finally back British business?

[George Eustice]

I, too, regularly meet food industry representatives—indeed, yesterday I met the retailers, and I meet manufacturers as well. The food industry is Britain’s largest manufacturer: bigger than aerospace and automotive combined. It employs millions of people and brings prosperity to every part of our United Kingdom. There are some cost pressures at the moment, caused by gas prices, which my ministerial colleagues elsewhere are looking at, but we continue to work closely with the industry to manage its challenges.

[Jim McMahon]

Essentially there is no plan, and the lack of a plan is a theme running through the Government.

Let us move on to sewage discharge. Yesterday, when asked what could be done to reduce sewage discharges in the River Wye, the Prime Minister suggested putting on his trunks and going for a swim. While it might be normal for him, most of us do not like being up to our necks in raw sewage. Yet investment is down, water companies are £50 billion in debt, private investment has not followed, and the only things that are up are sewage discharges and shareholder profits. That is hardly surprising when over the past decade the Environment Agency has had its grant cut from £120 million to £40 million, reducing its ability to investigate and enforce. What is the Secretary of State going to do to give everybody the right to clean water? And please, don’t say you’ll join the Prime Minister.

[George Eustice]

If the hon. Gentleman had followed some of the debate on the Environment Act 2021, he would know that this House has put in place legal obligations to reduce storm overflows in particular. That follows up on the Government’s decision last summer to put that in their policy statement to Ofwat. We have also doubled spending on catchment sensitive farming and have increased the number of Environment Agency inspectors by 50.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Thursday 9th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My colleague the Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food visited those areas last week and saw some of the devastation. The hon. Gentleman is right that there has been severe devastation and a tragic loss of many trees in those areas. There have been particular challenges in respect of power disruption; my colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy obviously lead on getting that power back, and I know they have been working hard to ensure the issue is addressed.

[Jim McMahon]

Let us be absolutely clear: this was a national emergency but a Cobra meeting was not called; the Prime Minister was missing in action; and now we discover that the Secretary of State was missing in action. Instead of supporting the affected communities, the Government were bogged down here in London defending a dodgy Christmas party while hard-working people in the north of England could not even turn on the Christmas lights. Ofgem has announced a narrow review of the response by grid networks, but the situation requires the Government to take charge and carry out a full review, including of their own response. Will the Secretary of State apologise for not taking the time to visit and commit to a full and proper review?

[George Eustice]

As I said, the Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food did visit and she held meetings with farmers to discuss their concerns. I have had raised with me issues such as damage to fencing and some of the problems that has caused for farmers. I know that my colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have been working hard on the key issue of power disruption.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Jim McMahon

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I am happy to look at the specific issue that my hon. Friend raised. However, it is also worth noting that while there has been an increase in demand at retail shops, notably in supermarkets, there has been a sharp fall in demand in the service trade, as restaurants, pubs and so forth find that demand for their services has plummeted. Our understanding at the moment is that there are not issues in the food service supply chain, but I am happy to take up any particular case that he might have.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Our supermarket workers have shown themselves to be the heroes of retail, making sure that people get fed and get the food that they need, but there are real concerns about whether they can maintain that service if they are not included in the list of key workers. Of course, many will have children who will need care if the schools cannot accommodate them. Can we have an assurance today that our retail workers will be on the list of key workers?

[George Eustice]

The Prime Minister made reference yesterday to the importance of those working in the food retail sector, in particular. Later today, the Government will announce jobs defined as key workers, but I can assure him that we fully recognise that over 25% of staff generally working in the food supply chain have children of school age, and that will be reflected when the list is published.