Food Prices and Food Poverty

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

In the Order Paper, the title of this debate is “Rising Food Prices and Food Poverty”, but I note that the words “food poverty” appear nowhere in the motion. We should start by examining what constitutes a state of affairs that can be described as food poverty. The Food Ethics Council, a registered charity, states on its website:

“Food poverty means that an individual or household isn’t able to obtain healthy, nutritious food, or can’t access the food they would like to eat.”

With so wide and all-embracing a definition, it could be argued that millions of people, including many quite high up the income scale, are living in food poverty. Having said that, there are people on limited and fixed incomes for whom paying the bills is a great struggle, but I do not accept the patronising view that they are somehow more likely to suffer from obesity because they can afford to eat only certain types of food. As we have heard this afternoon, processed and sugary foods are often much more expensive than fresh foods. I accept that food, as a variable item of expenditure, is always likely to come under pressure when there are other demands on the household budget. The question is what we can do to help those struggling to make ends meet.

I want to make two main points. First, we need to tackle the European Union’s common agricultural policy. It must be reformed. In a limited debate of this nature there is no time to do any more than flag up that disastrous policy. Few other sectors are controlled quite so overwhelmingly from Brussels as agriculture. Despite the Labour party signing away the UK rebate, supposedly in return for substantial reform, the CAP remains a complex system of subsidies and incentives that I believe distort the operation of the free market.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I am interested in my hon. Friend’s point about the impact of the CAP. Does he agree that the biggest impact is caused by completely unnecessary regulation on farming? I happen to be a livestock farmer, and the costs of some requirements, such as electronic tagging, have to be transferred and are a serious contributor to the cost of food.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I submit that the impact of EU regulation is of far greater concern to farmers than their relationship with our nation’s supermarkets. Despite all the tinkering with the CAP, it still takes up more than 40% of the entire EU budget. British consumers would be far better off if we were free from the tentacles of the European Union and its CAP altogether.

Secondly, I do not think that we should interfere with the operation of our retailers. The fierce competition between high street food retailers has led to the sustained availability of a huge choice of foods that previous generations could only have dreamt of. As Asda battles Tesco, which competes with Sainsbury’s, which fights with Morrisons, which battles with Waitrose, Lidl, Booths, Aldi and Marks & Spencer, all competing with each other and with smaller chains and independents, there is surely no doubt that all this competition has served to drive down prices for the benefit of all consumers.