Sustainable Development Goals

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

I am going to make some progress.

I want to talk about Labour’s priorities for the sustainable development goals. As I said, health is very important and is the bedrock of all human development. People in rich countries and poor countries alike are affected by disease outbreaks. Strong health systems build resilience. We have seen Ebola in west Africa overwhelm weak health systems, and as the party of the NHS Labour wants others to enjoy the protections we take for granted.

[Mary Creagh]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman was listening. As I said, unlike the many Members on the Government Benches who have discovered a passion for these things in their roles on appointment to the job, I do not need to go on a visit to understand. I have been on those visits that I detailed, and I have been in this role for seven weeks so I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give me some credit for my long-standing interest in this area.

I will now give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), if she wants to intervene.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The moment has slightly passed, but when my hon. Friend was listing the projects she has visited I was going to remind her that we also went together to Pakistan after the dreadful earthquake there and saw the relief efforts and the work DFID was doing.

[Mary Creagh]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I certainly remember one of the more hair-raising car rides of my life up to the mountains there and seeing the fantastic work that was being done in those areas.

I want to talk more generally now about our priorities. Universal health coverage would reduce inequality and would stop 100 million people a year falling into poverty. Figures from the House of Commons Library show that, unfortunately, this Government have cut bilateral spending on health in Sierra Leone and Liberia from £26 million in 2010 to £16 million this year. Four months ago the International Development Committee criticised DFID, saying:

“The planned termination of further UK funding to the Liberian health sector is especially unwise.”

Lasting health care systems are about more than the delivery of commodities such as vaccines and bed-nets, vital though they are. Despite the progress made over the last decade, HIV and AIDS continue to blight the lives of millions of people. Between 2008 and 2013, Britain gave £40 million to support the work done by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, yet Ministers have slashed that support to £5 million for 2013-18— a massive 87% cut.

Local Bus Services

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I was talking to the transport lead on Nottinghamshire county council this morning. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that trains also play a part. Trains are important, but the difficulties experienced by his Government—around the franchising process, the transfer of rolling stock and the delays in electrification—make reliance on the train as a substitute for bus services more difficult. We have had a freeze in the letting of franchises, with very big difficulties, particularly in the north of England, where carriages are going to be transferred down to Chiltern Railways. The services obviously need to be part of a planned network. The people who come to those stations either by car or bus use a different form of ticket when they get there and the point we are trying to get across is that devolving such decisions closer to communities will allow the system for rail, tram, underground, metro and bus services to be the same. Ease of interchange is key to encouraging people to use those services.

At the moment, outside London, our transport network adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Different forms of transport compete needlessly, instead of providing seamless journeys from A to B, and there is a lack of competition. That does not work in the passengers’ interests, the public interest or for local businesses. The Competition Commission has estimated that the failure of competition in the bus market costs the taxpayer £305 million every year.

London is the exception. Transport in the capital works far better for passengers than in any other British city. That is not simply because there is more money and there are more people. It is because Ken Livingstone, as London’s first directly elected Mayor, took some hard decisions. He introduced the congestion charge and properly enforced bus lanes. Labour understands how important it is to equip our cities with similar powers to make their transport systems work. Bus services should be available, accessible, affordable and convenient, which is why we have announced plans to give London-style bus powers to any city or county region that wants them.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

In Bristol, First has a near monopoly on buses. I have just asked for a meeting with the latest in a long line of managing directors so I can present yet another dossier of complaints from the public about unreliable services and high fares. Bristol is crying out for the sort of change that my hon. Friend has just mentioned. We need local control of bus services. May I urge her to make good speed in trying to bring in those changes? Perhaps she can visit Bristol to see just how much we need them.

[Mary Creagh]

I would be happy to visit Bristol to look at some of the issues there. I know that Bristol is a good cycling city. I have been invited there to try the cycling, so perhaps I can combine the visit.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mary Creagh

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I agree. Sure Start has been an amazing tool in the fight for good food in families, and for cooking lessons. The 20% cut imposed by the Government centrally can only make that more challenging for those dedicated workers.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Secretary of State for Education has decreed that free schools and academies do not have to meet the same nutritional standards in school meals as state schools?

[Mary Creagh]

Yes, it is slightly bizarre that that should be the case. I do not understand why, having battled so hard to secure minimum standards across the sector, the Secretary of State should think it acceptable to water them down, unless it is about saving money in pursuit of an ideological objective, but that could surely never be the Government’s intention.

I have mentioned “Richard Corrigan on Hunger” and the hospitalisation of children. People also talk in that programme about lunch boxes containing last night’s cold chips and ketchup. In government, we set up the School Food Trust, whose latest research shows that the average local authority-catered school dinner has gone up by 5p in the past year to £1.88 in primary schools, and by 4p to £1.98 in secondary schools. Councils are forced to charge more as their Government funding has been cut. We have heard today about councils that are doing their best to prioritise children’s nutrition. Those price rises could force parents to take their children out of school-meal provision and make do with a lunch box. If someone has three children who do not qualify for free school meals, £6 a day or £30 a week is an awful lot of money to find.

Food will be a defining issue for this century. The price spike in food commodities in 2008 showed that the era of cheap food may not be with us much longer. Increases in commodity prices—oil, fertiliser and pesticides—all contributed to year-on-year food price inflation of 6% last September: the second-highest increase in the EU, apart from Hungary. That 6% added £233 to the food bill of a family of two adults and two children. Food inflation, currently at 4%, remains higher than most pay rises that people will receive this year. As prices rise, people are eating less beef, lamb and fish, and more bacon. People are shopping around and trading down, and there is less supermarket loyalty. Figures from DEFRA reveal a 30% fall in the consumption of fresh fruit and veg by the poorest fifth of families since 2006. Those families are eating just 2.7 of their five-a-day fruit and veg.

We need a better understanding of what is driving up food prices, and how costs and risk are transferred across the supply chain. However, shopping is confusing and labels do not always show the true costs. Supermarkets are not required legally to show the unit cost on special offers, so they give the price pre-discount, which makes it impossible to compare prices on the shelf; or they give the price per unit of fruit, rather than by 100 grams, making comparisons impossible. We want supermarkets to be more transparent in their labelling to ensure that shoppers get the best deal. We want them to help people to eat healthily. Our traffic light system was rejected by significant players in the food industry, who have turned their back on what consumers want and need to make healthy choices.

We want a fair and competitive supply chain for growers, processors and retailers. The Competition Commission in 2008 found that there was an adverse effect on competition from unfair supply chain practices. It recommended that supermarkets with a turnover of more than £1 billion a year should be prevented from imposing retrospective discounts and from changing terms and conditions for suppliers. That leads to an unfair spread of risk and cost down the grocery supply chain, and to short-termism in relationships. [Interruption.] I thought I heard a phantom sedentary intervention, but that is not the case. We wanted a voluntary approach, but the supermarkets were unable to agree a way forward. That is why Labour in government secured cross-party agreement for a groceries code ombudsman to ensure a fair deal for farmers and producers. This Government’s delays and procrastination mean that the adjudicator will probably not be up and running until 2014-15.

Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I am sure that would be a great idea in a perfect world, but we are living in the real world and need to comply with the EU waste framework directive so as not to incur huge EU infraction fines. I will come on to what that means.

The three devolved Governments have all adopted an ambitious target of 60% of waste being recycled by 2020, and Scotland and Wales are aiming for 70% by 2025. That leaves England with the weakest recycling target in the UK, which is the target for the UK as a whole to meet the bare legal European minimum of 50% by 2020. There is a bitter irony in that, because the more the devolved nations achieve, the less England will have to deliver to reach the UK target. House of Commons Library research conducted for my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) shows that if the devolved nations meet their targets, England will need to recycle only 47.6% of waste by 2020 to meet its target.

Last week I visited the Rexam can manufacturing plant in Wakefield. Rexam works continually to develop its environmental performance, focusing on objectives including reducing the consumption of resources—I think that was the point that the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) was making. Over the past year, the plant has reduced its gas consumption by a quarter and its electricity consumption by 30%. The cans, which are ones that we all drink out of, such as Coca-Cola cans, are manufactured to a width of 97 microns, the width of two human hairs. That is another little fact that I can share with the House.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that supermarkets have a role to play in reducing waste, by reducing food packaging, by not encouraging people to throw away food on unrealistic sell-by dates, and by supporting projects such as FoodCycle, of which I have recently become a patron? That project takes unused food from supermarkets to community cafés and helps to feed people who would be unable to feed themselves. Does she agree that that is an absolutely brilliant project, and that supermarkets ought to be doing more to support it?

[Mary Creagh]

I do indeed, and I know that many of them are doing that. I have had a debate with the Co-operative about its naked cucumbers. [Interruption.] I pay tribute to charities that are working to recycle unwanted food.