Government Food Strategy

Jim McMahon Excerpts

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.