Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Report

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the former Archbishop of York, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, on behalf of these Benches and the whole House. It is a great privilege to follow him in today’s debate, on his return to the House, and I am sure that his wisdom, compassion, and insight, will be valuable as we move forward in this new parliamentary session.

Hungry for Change outlines the challenges in health and production underlying our food system. Like others, I pay tribute to Marcus Rashford for his campaign last summer in extending the national voucher scheme. I also wish him and the entire English football team good fortune for their opening Euro 2021 match against Croatia this Sunday.

Food poverty remains a serious issue here in the UK, one which has been exacerbated by the economic hardships endured by low-income individuals during the Covid crisis. The Department for Work and Pensions HBAI statistics for 2020 identify 5 million people, including 1.7 million children, as experiencing food insecurity, and half of them had very low food security. Part of the problem is the lack of non-credit based lifelines for people facing financial crises, forcing them to incur debt to pay for essentials. Often this is not a one-off situation but the result of chronic income shortages, particularly where social security payments are reduced to pay debts.

Christians Against Poverty reported that 37% of its clients have sacrificed meals due to debt. A further 56% have borrowed money to pay for food, clothing and other living costs. There is a health and human cost to this. Christians Against Poverty reported diabetic clients relying on sugar water because of insufficient food and parents who avoided eating dinner so that their children could eat each night. Surely this should not be happening in a country as developed and wealthy as ours.

As identified in the Hungry for Change report, repayments of advance payments for universal credit often leave people without enough money for food, let alone a healthy diet. However, deductions for rent, utilities or council tax arrears, court fines or benefit overpayments also contribute to insufficient funds. As of January 2021, Citizens Advice estimated that

“over 3.5 million people are currently behind on council tax”,

largely due to lost income from the Covid pandemic.

The interconnectivity of health, food poverty and financial well-being calls for more generous repayment terms for both universal credit advance payments and other arrears, allowing for affordable repayments on an extended timeframe. The cap of 25% standard allowance does not factor in individuals who are already required to use part of their standard allowance to pay a rent top-up in cases where money provided for housing costs has been reduced.

One innovative way to deal with the issue of health and financial insecurity is the Centre for Responsible Credit’s Financial Shield programme currently being piloted in Lambeth and Southwark. The programme works within the existing NHS framework with GPs and community groups to identify individuals suffering poor health outcomes relating to debt. In particular, its joint debt protocol seeks to prevent creditors from competing for repayments from impoverished individuals. It organises repayment under a single recovery protocol, giving the debtor time and space without the threat of enforcement, which could further affect their health. Tackling the issue of arrears will inevitably lead to better health outcomes. Levelling up in the post-Covid era will require innovative mechanisms and ideas like the Financial Shield to tackle issues like debt and income insecurity that lead to poor diets.

On the production side, it is important that agriculture and food production are not treated in isolation but seen in the context of the overall sustainability of the rural economy and rural communities. Although agriculture is no longer the major source of employment it once was in rural areas, it continues to have a major impact on the overall economy and sustainability of rural areas. It is why the new environmental land management scheme, or ELMS, provides great significance to rural areas and the overall rural economy. We need to align the interests of our farmers and rural communities in tackling the issues of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Already, some of the pilot ELM programmes have raised concerns about ensuring the viability of farm businesses while delivering the vital landscape protections set out in the ELMS. Farmers want to do the right thing for nature but will need proper incentives, clarity of guidance and assistance. So I hope the Government will continue to monitor the situation and get this right when introducing the full scheme in 2024.

The increased focus on the importance of rural areas in providing natural capital and sustainable supply chains presents opportunities to create new, greener jobs. The Hungry for Change report focused on the need for stable and secure funding for research and development. I believe it would be a real boon to make rural areas the focus of this new infrastructure as part of a wider strategy to revitalise the rural economy. It is important the Government recognise the vital nature of rural economies in being at the very centre of the green revolution and come forward with a strategic vision for the rural economy that incorporates agriculture and food production, as promised in their response to the Lords Rural Economy Committee.