National Food Strategy and Public Health

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is a real honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) for securing this important debate.

The national food strategy was a real opportunity to take steps to tackle the horrific levels of food insecurity being experienced by upwards of 11 million people in the UK. The report highlighted the deep inequalities in access to nutritious food, and I welcome proposals such as widening the eligibility threshold for free school meals—including for children whose immigration status currently excludes them—a long-term scheme for holiday food provision for children who get free school meals, and an extension of the healthy start scheme. If adopted, they would all bring about real improvements in access to healthy food. The recommendations represent an important step towards the change that is needed.

I place on the record my thanks to Henry Dimbleby, Anna Taylor and the team for their work on the national food strategy and for the time they gave me on this issue. However, I believe that the report can be built on even further and strengthened. We should not be tinkering around the edges; it should have gone further—I want to place that on the record. I was proud to campaign alongside thousands of others for the legal right to food, which should have been included in the recommendations. We will now focus on campaigning for the right to food to be included in the Government’s White Paper and good food Bill.

Like austerity, food insecurity is a political choice by Governments, not a predetermined occurrence, and it cannot be fixed without concerted effort by the Government of the day to take clear responsibility. I am sorry, but it is immoral that this country has more food banks than McDonald’s outlets in 2021. Let us remember that this is the fifth-richest country in the world.

I want to mention some of the public health impacts that we are seeing as a result of the crisis of food insecurity. Malnutrition has tripled in the UK since the coalition Government came to power in 2010, and cases of scurvy and rickets have more than doubled. This coincides with soaring poverty caused by austerity, the removal of the social safety net and the enormous rise in the use of food banks, as I have outlined. In Liverpool, 32% of adults are food-insecure, whereby food is a source of worry, frustration and stress. That equates to a staggering 160,000 people in my great city. Only 12% of kids in Liverpool aged 11 to 18 have five portions of fruits and vegetables a day—again, that is an appalling statistic.

Around 14% of households in Liverpool experience fuel poverty, which is significantly higher than the average across England. Fuel poverty is a barrier to cooking, as highlighted by Professor Ian Sinha, who is a paediatrician at the fantastic Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in my constituency. He says:

“A big issue at the moment is the interplay between food and fuel poverty—eat or heat—in essence babies and infants in the coldest houses will spend their calories trying not to get hypothermia rather than utilising the energy to grow their body systems and lay the foundations for a healthy life course”.

Children’s rights are being eroded by this Government, and in international comparisons the UK does badly. The right to food is one of the most basic and fundamental necessities, and one that has often been violated by this Government, through austerity, welfare sanctions, the dismantling of the safety net and public services, and recently the disgraceful cuts to universal credit. The right to food needs to be enshrined in law, and I urge the Minister to consider that.

One of the key asks of the right to food campaign is for universal free school meals, which has been touched on, in essence, throughout the debate. A nutritious, free school breakfast and lunch for every child in compulsory education would build on the recommendations of the national food strategy, and on the evidence of the positive health impact it would have. There will be those who say we cannot afford to do this. I would say, “How can we afford not to do this?”. It is an investment in our country’s future. If we accept the universal and compulsory requirement that all children up to the age of 16 be in school, why do we break from that principle of universal care, nurture and protection in relation to children’s meals during the school day? We would think it absurd if children were not provided with adequate shelter, heating, drinking water and sanitation while in school, so why take a different approach to the equally essential elements of learning materials and food? The evidence of better concentration, behaviour and learning among properly nourished children is there for all to see, and universal free school meals would, further, avoid the bureaucracy and stigma of means-testing our school- age children. Portugal provides universal free school meals. All children sit down together and have a three- course meal—they break bread together. That is where we should be going, and what we should aim for as a society.

Around the country, the strong backing for the right to food to be enshrined in law is clear. Since we started the campaign 12 months ago, a motion has been passed at the TUC conference in September, with 5.5 million trade union members overwhelmingly voting for the right to food. Councils up and down the country have declared themselves right-to-food towns and cities: Liverpool, Manchester, Greater Manchester combined authority, Liverpool city region, Rotherham, Brighton and Hove, Haringey, St Helens, Preston, Lancaster, Durham, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Totnes, Coventry, Sheffield and Birmingham. Many more are considering declaring themselves right-to-food towns and cities. That is the strength of feeling across the country.

I hope we can build on the ambitions of the national food strategy. I ask the Minister to consider putting the right to food in a Government White Paper and good food Bill. If this is not achieved, the mantra of levelling up will be an empty slogan for so many currently living in food poverty.