Food Security

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone, and I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for introducing this debate. Food security is more important than ever and it is good to see the same old faces in this Chamber debating it, although there should not just be those same old faces—[Interruption.] Those same familiar faces, I should say. This needs to be an issue that all 650 MPs feel they should be speaking about. It is good to see my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), and Government colleagues who I recognise from debates of old, but we need to make sure that food security is not just an issue for people who bang on about farming, like myself and the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). We need to make sure it is put into plain English and put further up the political league table of issues; if we do not, we will be talking only to ourselves. We need to make sure that our advocacy and the message we send in this debate is felt much more widely than just by us here, who probably all agree on these issues.

Food security matters more than ever because food is becoming more insecure for so many people in Britain and around the world. Food prices are up, food poverty is up, and the Government’s food strategy has been delayed yet again. I am afraid that this ramshackle approach to food security will not do: we must do better. All of us have walked into supermarkets recently and seen the increase in prices.

Jack Monroe has argued successfully and powerfully that the increase in food prices is greatest for some of the food that costs the least, so it has a bigger impact on the budgets of people who have the least. There has been some progress in that area, but not enough. It is getting harder and harder for people to afford food. I know that the Minister is not solely responsible for this—she might be responsible for food, but often what we are talking about is poverty. However, food prices are now going up. The argument that food poverty was not about food, but about poverty, might have held water in the past, but now it is about food prices going up as well as poverty going up. We need to find a much better way of addressing both those issues.

There are a number of issues I want to speak about in the time that remains to me, now that I have finished ranting. We need to recognise that food security is affecting each and every one of our communities. There are now more food banks in this country than branches of McDonald’s. Let us be clear: each of those food banks—those emergency food provisions, the food larders—is testament to the generosity and kindness of that community, but none of them should exist, because we should have a system in which everyone can afford to feed themselves, the energy to cook that meal, and the housing that goes with it. It is shameful that in the 21st century, we are in a position where so many people in our communities are unable to afford the most basic of food.

We know that from tomorrow, with the Government’s national insurance tax rise and with energy prices going up by £700 for huge numbers of people in our communities, more and more people will be pushed into poverty, and more and more children will be going to bed in the evening not having eaten. When I was volunteering with the soup run recently in Plymouth, I spoke to a gentleman who said, “I am in work. I come to the soup run because I spend my wages giving my kids a meal. I put them to bed and, once I know they are asleep, I come to the soup run so I can get some food.” It is utterly shameful that that is happening in our society. There are some brilliant people working in this space, but it is shameful.

Food security is not just a moral issue; it should be about our national security as well. I would like food security to feature in the Government’s national security strategy. I want a decent mention of it in the revised integrated review—which must come, because the current integrated review is so out of date. If we are to have that, let us have an ambition to rear, grow and catch more food in Britain. We produce only about 60% of our domestic produce. I am not arguing that we should grow food that we do not have the ability to grow; I am arguing that, where we do have the ability to grow and catch food, we should grow and catch more of it. It would be good for not only Britain, but our jobs, rural and coastal areas, cutting carbon and higher standards.

I would like the Government to adopt Labour’s policy of “make, buy and sell more in Britain”, which is about not just British steel in warships, but food. If we do that, we will be supporting many of the farmers who are facing real struggles due to higher input prices and the stagnant prices paid by supermarkets, and who are potentially being undercut by suppliers growing cheaper food to lower standards abroad, which are allowed access to the UK because of really poor trade deals signed by the Government.

We need food security to be a national security issue, but we also need to recognise that there is too much wasted food. We must put greater pressure on the supermarkets—so much food is wasted along the supply chain before it gets to the shelf. We all have a responsibility to use the food we buy to make sure it is not going in the bin, but we must also cut out food waste along the way. Like energy companies, supermarkets have for far too long been getting away with prices that are too high. I would like the Minister to use her powers to address that.

There is a good argument for a right to food and for plans for food security, to grow more food in the UK and to make food and energy more affordable. If we do not do that, more families will slip into hunger and poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair, Mr Hollobone, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) on securing this debate.

Food security is a crucial component of national security, but it has received far too little attention from this Government. As Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, rightly said this week, food security should be a national priority, yet here we are on a Thursday afternoon at the end of the Session in a sparse Westminster Hall, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) said with such passion. This is par for the course when it comes to food security issues. A lengthy and interesting food security report—I see the Minister has a copy—was sneaked out by the Government on the last day possible before Christmas, with no opportunity for proper scrutiny, and now there have been months of delays in the Government’s response to the national food strategy.

In the meantime, as we all know, the cost of the family food shop is rising week in, week out. The Library’s excellent briefing quotes the Trussell Trust’s latest survey, which found that 17% of people receiving universal credit had to visit a food bank between December 2021 and March 2022. That is extraordinary, because it could mean half a million people visiting a food bank. That report also found that 2 million people went without food on more than one day in the month, which is absolutely shocking. Of course, we have also heard recently about people rejecting food that needs to be cooked because they cannot afford the fuel. I could go on; we are familiar with these issues, and the Minister will probably say that they are welfare issues, not food issues. Yes, the Government’s welfare policies are a disgrace and should be a cause of profound shame in this country, but the impact on food security at a household level is all too clear. It is a real and pressing issue for millions of our people in our country.

Moving on to some of the wider issues, we all know about the disruptive effects on production and trade caused by the dreadful events in Ukraine, but they were hardly unforeseen. While tensions were mounting between Ukraine and Russia in the autumn of last year and analysts were warning about what could come, the Government’s food security report, citing Ukraine as a country with a high market share of global maize supply, said that it did not expect any major changes in world agricultural commodity markets and the top exporting countries of those commodities. Let me put it more precisely: early in December, the US released intelligence of Russian invasion plans, but later in the same month, that report said that

“Real wheat prices are expected to decline in the coming years based on large supplies being produced in the Black Sea region”.

Frankly, that is incredible. Were the Government simply unaware of the potential of the situation to impact our food supply and global wheat prices, or were they just ignoring it? What is the point of a report that is supposed to guide policy choices on food security when the most basic, blatant risks are glossed over?

It is not as if we have not been through these crises before. A similar situation arose at the start of the pandemic, and it is worth going back and reading Henry Dimbleby’s interim report, which talks about that period in its opening pages. To their credit, at that point, the Government did take action. They kept the show on the road, they got unusual levels of co-operation across the food chain, and they kept shadow politicians in the loop. I commend them for that. It was a united national effort, but since those early days, that sense of purpose has fallen away. That is to be regretted, because the situation has become very difficult again, with the carbon dioxide crisis before Christmas—which I will come back to—being one such example.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s decision to reconvene the food resilience industry forum, but it should have been done sooner. In the past month, I have spoken endlessly to representatives across the supply chain who report what seems to them to be a real lack of urgency from the Government, with limited dialogue and communication. On hearing that, I asked the Government why they had yet to reconvene that forum—other countries had already done so, with Ireland’s Agriculture Minister establishing a food security committee three weeks ago in response to the invasion. I got a written answer in which the Government told me they could stand up a food resilience industry forum

“at short notice should the need arise.”

Should the need arise! It arose weeks ago. At last it has happened, and I welcome that, but always slow and always behind the curve.

I also urge the Minister to look at the Food and Drink Federation’s call for a national food security council to ensure this is not just seen as a DEFRA issue, but that there is proper cross-Government co-ordination and a streamlined process for approving substitute ingredients. The supply chain is fragile, and the Government have to help producers and manufacturers adjust. While they may not like it, that will mean working with our near neighbours in the EU, because if they change the rules ahead of the UK, the market moves and our producers risk being disadvantaged.

While we are less directly exposed than other countries on some levels, we cannot be complacent because some of these concerns are international. There is no doubt that many countries that rely heavily on grain from Ukraine will be at serious risk. We know that rising prices lead to hunger and political volatility and that will affect us all, albeit indirectly. It is not just a short-term problem either. The invasion is impacting Ukrainian farmers’ ability to sow and prepare for next year’s harvest. Regardless of direct impacts, the stress on the global system will add a further inflationary pressure to food prices. Of course, it is not just grain; it is fertiliser, fuel costs and labour shortages, which will all have an impact on our producers.

The issue affects everybody. This week’s Fishing News details the impact fleet-by-fleet, with Seafish concluding that the majority of the fleet cannot remain viable as things stand. I understand that Barrie Deas of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations has requested an urgent meeting with the Minister. I hope she can confirm today that that meeting will be granted— hopefully much more quickly than the frankly insulting delays we are encountering with her colleagues at the Department for Transport over vessel inspections.

[Luke Pollard]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that Seafish has gotten rid of its “Love Seafood” campaign that promotes British fish—fish caught in Britain, to be eaten in Britain? Does he agree that the scrapping of that scheme seems like a backwards step?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I always agree with my hon. Friend, but he makes an important point. It is not just fishers, of course; farmers, growers and everyone are still relating those additional costs.

I want to talk briefly about fertilisers because they are directly linked to our food security. We may be able to farm differently, and there is an important opportunity here, which I hope we can explore another day. Our ambition should be, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) has argued, to make a sprint for a greener future. Labour’s £28 billion per annum pledge will play an important role. In the short term, the fertiliser shortages are acute, and we know that as the gas prices rise, that creates particular problems. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit estimated that if current prices continue, the cost of extra fertiliser for British farmers will be £760 million, and the NFU is in no doubt that it will affect yields.

I appreciate that announcements were made yesterday, including the establishment of an industry fertiliser roundtable, which is welcome, but it must be accompanied by action. That includes the two fertiliser plants, which need to be back in action, and I ask the Minister to report on what is being done on that. The Minister will be aware that the European Commission has moved to allow direct intervention to get the Romanian plant going. What are the UK Government doing? While clarifications on the farming rules for water are broadly welcome, it is sorting out a mess of the Government’s own making.

In conclusion, Labour is committed to fixing the food system, ending the growing food bank scandal, ensuring families can access healthy food and improving our food security as a country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said, we want to see more food grown in this country to a good quality, not the dumping of lower standard food imports, which will undermine our farmers. We want to buy, make and sell more in Britain, and make changes to public procurement so that our schools and hospitals are stocked with more locally sourced, healthy food. We would lead by example by putting high-quality food at the heart of our public buying.

At an animal welfare event yesterday—a Conservative-branded event—I was reminded that McDonald’s has higher animal welfare standards in its supply chains than the Government demand in the public sphere. It is a sobering thought, and I am afraid that it speaks volumes about the Government’s record. This country could do better. We can have a more resilient food system that feeds our people better and sustains, nourishes and protects our environment. For that to happen, it needs a Government committed to making food security a national priority. At the moment, I am afraid that there is precious little sign of that.