Food Security

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Alyn Smith

Thursday 31st March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alyn Smith]

It is great to see a fan of my early work.

“I believe the UK government authorities have been far too complacent about the security and stability of our food supplies…assuming that international transit networks and foreign sources of supply will never fail.

Last week was the mother of all wake-up calls.”

I said that in The Scottish Farmer on 29 April 2010, talking about the Icelandic volcano. However, I am afraid that the sentiment still applies and the lessons remain largely unlearned by the UK Government. I do not necessarily criticise our Minister in the Chamber but we all—all of us, collectively—must get food security far higher on our agenda. The lessons need to be learned.

I hope that I have proven over the years, that I am cross-party; I believe in consensus, and in working with other parties. I do not fabricate disagreement where there is none, but, damn sure, we disagree on food. We have a different sense of where we want to get to. We also have a food emergency on this Government’s watch, and we urgently need to change course. I implore the Minister to take my suggestions seriously, because they are made in good faith.

Things have got worse in the last 20 years. The latest figures show that the UK’s food self-sufficiency has gone from 80% to below 60%. Of course, we cannot and should not produce everything, but our food supply is under unprecedented strain. I believe that food security should be viewed as our national security is, and given the same urgency and priority within Government. Anything that undermines food production, however well intentioned, should be viewed with extreme scepticism.

Food production must be the basis of the rural economy. Only profitable food businesses can form the bedrock of our rural economy. No amount of tourism, birdwatching or tree planting can replace it. Those are all important, but they are add-ons, not the basis or bedrock of our rural economy.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The points that my hon. Friend is making are extremely important, and really underlie all the reasons why the debate is so important. Is he aware that evidence suggests that in just over six decades, globally, over 30% of arable land has been degraded due to human-induced activities? The point that he is making is one that the Minister and all of us need to focus on.

[Alyn Smith]

I am grateful for the intervention. That is a very important point. There will always be conflict over land use; there will always be competing purposes, and we must be aware of the perverse incentives to take prime agricultural land out of food production. That would leave us more vulnerable to international shocks and not more resilient. We must put food production far higher on our agenda.

We have seen action after action that has made farming more difficult because of political decisions. The sector was already reeling from Brexit and covid, and now the dreadful events in Ukraine have every single light on farming’s dashboard flashing red. The input costs for feed have gone up, and supply is becoming more difficult. Fuel costs—red diesel and gas—are all going up. Fertiliser costs are rocketing. Labour shortages are real, and are increasing costs—in fact, I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on the increase in the hourly wage to £10.10 an hour for seasonal workers, because that also increases costs, already, with labour shortages. Finally, UK trade policy—which always puts the interests of farmers first, but it is a shame that those are farmers in other countries—is weakening our food production domestically.

The SNP’s position is clear. It is a discussion for another day, but we have a clear agenda that we want to achieve: we want to get back into the European Union, the single market and the common agricultural policy. We think that would be far and away the best solution to support agriculture. In the last couple of weeks the EU has just announced a €1.5 billion support fund for farmers. The UK needs to match that urgency and priority, but other things need to be done, too.

In Scotland we have maintained pillar 1 payments and the drift of policy in England is regrettable and needs to be reversed. I would like to see pillar 1 payments retained and reintroduced as policy, or, if not as policy, as an emergency measure to get farmers through the crisis. We need to reduce red diesel duty to zero and address energy costs via a price cap on input, and we urgently need to review immigration policy to ensure labour supply. I urge the Government to consider loan guarantees along the lines of the covid support for agricultural businesses that face a short-term—hopefully—crisis in their cash flow. We need to prioritise agriculture in future trade deals, and anything that undermines indigenous food production must be viewed with scepticism. We need to see proper scrutiny of supermarkets and the role of multiples in the supply chain.

My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. Our interdependence and international solidarity have come into sharp relief lately, but so has our lack of resilience. That lack of resilience and the social consequences of rising food costs are affecting every community that we all represent. If the Icelandic volcano in 2010 was a wake-up call, the events in Ukraine show that our resilience must be prioritised more, and food production must be at the heart of that resilience. There is lots that we can do, and I will work with anybody to help promote that agenda.