Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

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

The fear currently being felt across this nation is palpable. Millions are worried that they will freeze or starve in their homes. In the fifth-richest country in the world, how has this injustice been allowed to happen? That is the position that so many face due to political choices taken in this House. Research by the Food Foundation in 2020 showed that 20% of adults in the UK—around 11 million—face food insecurity each year. A survey of food industry workers by the bakers union showed that more than a third went without to make sure that others in the house got a meal. They are the ones who produce the food in this country.

Food poverty leads to health and life expectancy inequality, malnutrition and obesity. Poverty destroys the life chances of future generations in our poorer communities. It affects children’s educational attainment and life chances. How can we accept in this House that we have more food banks than McDonald’s outlets? When do we collectively accept that the system is broken and is failing the people we are elected to represent? Hunger is a political choice; fuel poverty is a political choice. They are both choices made by the present Government, like the cut to universal credit, benefit sanctions and the erosion of workers’ rights, all alongside a decade of Conservative austerity, which has cut our vital services to the bone.

It is three years since the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty issued his powerful report on the UK, in which he described the horrific impact of the Government’s dismantling of the social safety net and the political choices that have led to the injustice of where we find ourselves today. Nothing was done and his warnings were dismissed. The time for sticking plasters, such as a reliance on thousands of food bank and pantry volunteers and donors, is over. We need systemic change so that all our people might live with the opportunity of health, happiness and dignity. This is a humanitarian crisis that demands permanent solutions, not tinkering with a system that is broken.

If reliance on charity alone were considered a sufficient guarantee for basic human needs in the UK, previous generations would not have legislated for universal state schooling and the national health service—solutions to fundamental problems which have transformed this nation for the better. That is why we need to legislate for the right to food. We need enforceable food rights to ensure that the Government of the day are accountable for making sure that nobody goes hungry and are prevented from making decisions that lead to people being unable to afford to put a meal on the table. Ministers should be under a duty, when setting the minimum wage and any relevant social security benefit, to state how much of the prescribed sum has been calculated for food, because right now it is not enough. How can this be allowed?

We should also legislate for universal free school meals: a nutritious, free school breakfast and lunch for every child in compulsory education. If we accept the universal and compulsory requirement that all children up to the age of 16 should be in school, why do we break from that principle of universal care, nurturing and protection in relation to their meals during the day? What a difference that would make to the 4.5 million children going hungry today.

Things must change. With so many trade unions, councils and community campaigners across the UK calling for the right to food to be put into law, will the Minister listen to those voices from across the political spectrum and impress on the Chancellor that the buck stops with him? The richest man in Parliament must find a solution and include the right to food in his spring statement, because hunger is a political choice.