National Food Strategy and Food Security

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I thank the hon. Member for joining in and adding that pertinent point.

We could not have this debate without talking about the high energy prices at the moment, with an increase of 400%, and what is happening to farms having to cope with those increased costs. For APS, this has resulted in reduced production of UK tomatoes and other foods, because the costs of production are not recovered through higher prices. Farmers must be mindful of passing on higher prices to customers—if they can, as the supermarkets and shops the food goes to will not accept them—so we must be mindful of how we support farmers.

That company has even developed a combined heat and power plant, which supplies 3 MW of power to Alderley Edge, and it uses the waste heat and the carbon dioxide from that to grow their crop. I wonder whether it can get some recognition that it uses carbon dioxide from power generation to produce food, because that would help it to offset the huge increases in energy cost. I know the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is reviewing the move from the European Union energy trading scheme to the ETS UK equivalent post Brexit, but can the Minister liaise with his ministerial colleague at BEIS and give me the latest news on that?

Food production is essential for the delivery of the environmental benefits on which the Government plan to centre in their agricultural support policy, but unless we recognise the dual role of farmers as food producers and conservationists, we risk turning farmers into environmental contractors with little incentive to continue farming. That would do enormous damage to the jobs and communities that depend on farming, as well as weaken our food security. The strategy needs to be clearer in linking food production to action against climate change and enhancing the natural environment.

My final plea is for greater clarity on food labelling, so that the high standards of British food are known and recognised—so a shopper knows the quality of the produce and where it is from. Buying British and locally, for me that means buying from Cheshire, is important not just because of the high husbandry standards of UK food but the low transport mileage to get from field to fork. That low transport mileage is particularly important if we are concerned about the environment. As my beef and sheep farmers say, it is better to have high-quality beef and lamb from Cheshire than chickpeas from halfway around the world. [Interruption.] I thank Members for the cheers for that.

On food standards, it is important when the Government are negotiating and implementing free trade agreements to avoid undermining the domestic sector for farmers and growers and reducing standards. In its report on the UK-Australia free trade agreement issued on Friday 17 June 2022, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee concluded:

“In practice it appears unlikely that food produced to lower animal welfare standards will enter the UK as a result of this deal.”

That is positive news, but my farmers are calling for greater transparency on food labelling. Like me, they believe in choice, but we only have choice when we have knowledge of what we are choosing and what we are choosing from.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I sit on that Committee and we observed that the average size of a sheep farm in Australia is 100 times the size of one in Wales, and they practise mulesing—shearing the back- sides of sheep in a painful way without anaesthetics—and transport cattle for 24 hours. So there is a clear problem of British producers being undercut by inhumane welfare practices and massive intensity of production.

[Esther McVey]

That relates to the transparency that some people are calling for to know what they are eating and enjoying, to appreciate the difference in cost and the treatment the animals have gone through. Fair competition can only really come from accurate labelling and transparency on produce. The UK produces some of the best food in the world, with the highest standards of safety and animal welfare, and it is only right that people in this country know what they are getting.

Tatton farmers and producers are hard-working, dedicated to the sector, industrious and experts in their field, with many generations of experience. They want to help solve the food security issues that this country is facing, but along with this strategy, which goes some of the way, and along with awareness of what is happening around the world, more assistance is needed to help our farmers here and now with the problems the world is facing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In 2010, when the Labour Government left office, there were 26,000 people getting food from food banks. By 2021, that had increased a hundredfold to 2.6 million, and that was before the Ukraine war. Now, one in four children and one in five adults—4 million children and 10 million adults—are in food poverty, in the sixth richest country in the world. That is a catastrophe. The number of people who are in food poverty, who cannot afford to eat nutritious food and who are freezing in their house, is much, much higher than it was during the pandemic.

I am a member of the Co-operative party and the Labour party. We agree with the right to food. The right to life is in the UN charter and the UN convention on human rights, and obviously an intrinsic part of the right to life is the right to food. I support Co-op party initiatives such as Healthy Start vouchers, and it is important that they be rolled out and index-linked to keep up with inflation, but we need much more.

The co-operative movement was started by the Rochdale pioneers to stop adulterated food. It is about food, and everybody should have the right to daily nutritional food. Winston Churchill famously said that the most important asset of a country is its health; a country’s health is predicated on having enough healthy food, and the reality is that people do not have enough money to buy healthy food after taking account of the housing costs and the heating costs that they face. Amartya Sen, a famous Nobel prize winner, wrote about famines: he was focused on the developing world, but he argued that famines are not about a shortage of food, but about the conjunction of high prices with low wages in particular communities, leading to starvation.

That is what we are now on the brink of seeing in Britain. High prices are coming in—yes, because of Ukraine, but also from Brexit. The price of imports is going down as the value of sterling has gone down. We have shortages in our own production: a quarter of our fruit is not picked, we have had a mass culling of 40,000 pigs and we do not have enough people to work in abattoirs. We have problems with food production locally and with sterling being further pushed down, which is driving prices up. Some of those problems were avoidable political problems.

Alongside high prices, we have low wages. Since 2010, we have had very low growth and pay freezes. In the previous 10 years under the Labour party, or certainly in the 10 years to 2008, the economy grew by 40%. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that if that trend in growth had continued, average wages would now be £10,000 higher. The country would be much more resilient to the external shocks that are now causing this catastrophe of localised famine.

The Government need to act, and act quickly. They need to think carefully about how to manage the upcoming new Budget. I know everybody thinks the national insurance abolition idea is great on the face of it, but the reality is that it will give £7.60 back to the lowest 10% and more than £1,000 back to the richest 10%. At a time when half of people on universal credit are in food poverty, we need to think very carefully about how we sustain our people and about what is right and what is effective for our nation.

We have talked about the quality of our food, but the truth is that people in poverty are often obese because they have to resort to low-nutrition, high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar products that keep them going for a long time but are not particularly good for them. That is storing up a time bomb for the NHS of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and strokes. Health inequality is a real problem for us. Famously, in a 2014 study of many countries over many years, the OECD found a relationship between inequality and growth, namely that less inequality means higher growth and a bigger cake.

Health inequality is also linked to income inequality. I look forward to the White Paper, but we need to be serious. We need to feed our people to get a productive economy and a fair economy that we can all be proud of. I am from Wales, and I am very pleased about the initiatives in Wales that are providing universal free breakfasts and are now rolling out universal free lunches. For all children—for all the adults who sign their children up—that will be free in Wales. Henry Dimbleby, whose strategy I very much welcome, has welcomed that. When questioned by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, on which I serve, about universal credit and levels of payment to make food affordable, he said:

“That is beyond my pay grade.”

But it is not beyond the Government’s pay grade to realise what the issues are. If children have affordable, nutritious food, their performance is better, their life chances are better, future tax revenues are better and NHS costs are lower. From UK plc’s point of view it makes a lot of sense, quite apart from being morally right.

I spoke only this week to an online audience of student unions across Wales. That was one group, of course, and I am not saying that they are the only group, but as hon. Members might expect, they face high rents, they live in houses in multiple occupation and their food costs and energy costs have gone up. A large proportion of them have something like £10 a week or less to live on after paying for utilities. They cannot afford their student learning materials. More than 90% of them face mental health problems. There is a cost of living crisis, and they also face an uncertain future in the jobs market and the mortgage market. We need to think very carefully about that.

Finally, I turn to food security. Having invaded the Crimea, Russia is now producing 15% more food. We should think about our food security. The cost of fertiliser has gone up, and we are reliant on too much. Our home production should be organic. We need spatial planning. We need a proper plan so that we do not end up with another wave of austerity that costs 300,000 lives. Instead, we should focus on the opportunity to provide all our people with decent food. We need a healthy and productive economy that is more equal and fairer, and a stronger, greener future for all, but I fear that that will only come with a Labour Government.