Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Report

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and his committee for their extraordinarily valuable and challenging report. It covers and makes recommendations on many of the key strategic challenges we face, not just in the United Kingdom, but globally. I draw attention to my interests recorded in the register. In particular, I chair the Prince’s Countryside Fund and the Cawood Group, which provides analytical services to the agri-food, environmental and waste sectors. I am also president of Social Farms & Gardens. I welcome back the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, and thank him for his speech. As a Northumbrian living not so far from Lindisfarne and very close to the history of St Cuthbert, I welcomed his comments.

First, while the Government’s response to the report is welcome, it is easy to delay action on a number of key concerns while waiting for Henry Dimbleby’s stage 2 report. The Government are fuelling an expectation that Henry will address the issues, and I am sure he will, so we can anticipate a positive and clear response from the Government after his report is released. I hope the Minister appreciates that he will have the task of managing our expectations.

I focus on a number of related issues. The fundamental challenges that the report highlights have already been mentioned in this debate: child poverty, healthy school meals, food insecurity, the composition of processed food, obesity and dietary health, and a net-zero environmental impact from food production. Many of these have been accentuated by Covid and lockdown, but have been trending worse and worse for at least two or three decades, perhaps longer. Successive Governments have tried to intervene in a variety of ways, with limited success, so all the evidence suggests that tinkering at the edges will not succeed.

It is almost 20 years since I was part of an obesity taskforce—and look at how much worse the problem is now. This is an embarrassingly acute crisis. The report highlights the serious societal cross-cutting issues and all government departments need to commit to a strategic plan to address them. If ever there was a need to see evidence of joined-up government action, it is now, on these issues.

Let me refer to some specifics. First, on public procurement, in the 2000s, I spent years working with local authorities, contractors, schools, hospitals, et cetera, along with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, trying to promote sustainable and healthy sourcing of food. It is hard work to change a culture driven by economics that has no regard to the impact it might be having on health or the environment, but it is possible. It requires sustained effort and ongoing monitoring. It beggars belief that we spend billions on the procurement of public food for a wide range of institutions from prisons to government departments and everything in between—schools, hospitals, et cetera—without having clear national specifications on nutritional and environmental standards. Government can directly influence this and numerous local initiatives have succeeded for at least a while, but it requires sustained discipline and constant oversight to become firmly embedded within policy and systems. I would like the Minister to comment on that.

I also endorse the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, in stressing the importance of retaining a viable family farm network in the management of our countryside and ensuring that the market for healthy sustainable food is not undermined by cheap lower-standard imports. Like the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I would be failing in my responsibility if I did not refer to the current uncertainty around the Australian deal and the lack of opportunity to scrutinise it by the trade and agriculture commission, which has not yet been established, and to debate it in this House. I endorse what the noble Baroness said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, about free trade deals. I desperately want to sign a free trade deal with Australia, provided Australian farmers are subject to the same standards that we are. That would be good. I just remind the noble Lord that Singapore does not have any farmers to worry about.

Secondly, we have all been shocked by how many households and individuals have become dependent on food banks. In an advanced society like ours, this is a serious indictment. However, I am not of the view that this is a perfect indicator of poverty levels, but others who have spoken on this topic are much better qualified than I am. It is a complex issue and will not simply be resolved by throwing more cash at the problem, although this may be necessary. To undertake an analysis of what a sustainable and healthy diet would cost and how it relates to current levels of benefits and universal credit would be useful, but other measures are also essential to address the fundamental problems that we face.

I have been impressed by the work of Christians Against Poverty, for example, which was mentioned earlier in the debate by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, and its work to help willing households and families, in crisis, to better manage their weekly budgets, recover from indebtedness and, I hope, eat healthier diets in the process. This help, together with access to healthy raw ingredients and the ability to prepare and cook healthy meals, is essential if this issue is to be addressed and dependence on food banks and the consumption of processed unhealthy food is to be reduced. I encourage the Government to help and support such bodies undertaking this crucial service.

Finally, I address a hobbyhorse of mine: that of helping schoolchildren to better understand the importance of food—where it comes from, how to prepare it, how it can influence their health and how incredibly important their decisions are when they are filling a shopping basket. Visiting the countryside and farms to see how food is grown, how animals are cared for and why food production is an important function of farming businesses and the management of the countryside are important influences. They also begin to have their minds opened to environmental issues, what sustainability means and how their decisions and their families’ decisions can make a real difference to their carbon footprint. Linking these experiences to cooking in schools—domestic science or whatever the topic is called—and integrating curriculum lessons and projects over a wide range of subjects, which can be done, will influence their attitudes and diets, and begin to reverse the current trends for this and future generations.

Wherever possible, we should endeavour to link local sourcing to procurement of food for local schools, and encourage schools to visit the farms that supply them. Inner-city schools are more of a challenge, but I have hosted thousands of inner-city schoolchildren on my farm and they have hugely benefited from the experience. It all makes complete sense to me and it works, but it requires effort on the part of the Government, Defra, the Department for Education and local authorities all working together. Being an optimist, I live in hope that it might be possible to deliver this on a national scale. As far as Defra is concerned, it is essential that public access within ELMS includes educational school visits, and that all farms that are equipped and willing to host school visits are encouraged to do so, with this included within the scope of the definition of public good, not just for the higher-tier scheme, but for all three tiers. I hope the Minister confirms this.

In conclusion, I restate that we are facing the consequences of decades of worsening trends. It will take decades of concerted effort to turn these around and reverse what we are seeing around us every day. That will be achieved only if this Government and future Governments commit to an integrated programme of action, across all departments, and apply it locally as well as nationally.