Food Prices and Food Poverty

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I shall try my level best to allow everyone to speak. The wind-up speeches begin at 6.40 pm, so there is a six-minute limit on speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in the debate, and I apologise for not being here at the start—I was serving on a Statutory Instrument Committee.

I am afraid that the Government are yet again out of touch, in this case with families feeling the squeeze of higher food prices. At 4%, food inflation in the UK outstrips that of all other EU countries. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), because of his interest in Europe, and to be able to give that context.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) powerfully and graphically spelt out, food poverty is a growing concern. The cost of living crisis is affecting households across the country and more families are relying on food banks. I pay tribute to the food bank in my constituency, organised by Scunthorpe Baptist Church, which does a fantastic job in helping people to meet their crisis needs, particularly when there is a dislocation in their benefit payments. As has been said throughout the debate, although we recognise the great benefits that food banks bring to society, it is a great shame and a great condemnation of where we are that people in such a rich country have to rely on them.

I am afraid that the Government are making it harder for families to make ends meet and overseeing a massive growth in handouts from food banks as families struggle with rising costs, higher bills and job insecurity. Rising food poverty is a national scandal. Last year 60,000 people relied on food handouts, including 20,000 children, and one new food bank opened every week. A family with two small children now has to pay over £233 a year more for food due to rising prices.

My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) drew attention to the health risks of families eating less fresh fruit and vegetables, and I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) speak about the contribution that people growing their own food on allotments can make. I am pleased that in my constituency there are initiatives across many primary schools whereby fruit and vegetables are grown to make children and families aware of the benefit of eating them. Indeed, Leys Farm junior school not only has such an initiative, but the produce is served in the school kitchen. There is much good practice out there that we need to build on.

Consumers want transparent food pricing by major retailers so that it is easy to compare goods and to make informed choices, and that is why unit pricing is so important. I am concerned, however, about the need to crack on with introducing the grocery code adjudicator; there is a strong cross-party consensus for putting that role in place.

I have asked several written questions on the matter and, in particular, on the issue of confidentiality in order to protect people who make complaints to the adjudicator, and the responses that I have received have all been in a similar vein: “Protecting the confidentiality of suppliers who raise complaints will be both a power and a duty of the adjudicator.” But the question is how that is done, and the key issue is how it is managed.

The security surrounding confidentiality is important. I had a meeting today with representatives of a packaging federation, and they made it clear that their members would be concerned about making individual complaints to the adjudicator, and that third-party complaints would need to be part of the structure. The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) said that people in the supply chain often operate in a climate of fear, so it is important that the decisions of this House, in pushing forward the role of the grocery adjudicator, ensure that that climate no longer exists and is properly addressed.

The National Farmers Union in my constituency and throughout the country is very much concerned to ensure that there is a third-party complaints process. Alex Godfrey, who represents the NFU in Scunthorpe, has made that very clear to me, echoing the evidence that was given to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

I hope that this debate helps to hasten putting in place the grocery code adjudicator in a way that gains the confidence of not only the people in this Chamber, but the people out there and, most importantly, the people who might want to use the adjudicator to ensure fair play in the world.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am grateful to the previous two speakers, Nic Dakin and David Nuttall, for not using their full allocation of time, as it allows at least two more speakers to get in.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this debate, as there is no doubt about the conclusion that we should make—that there is a link between food prices and food poverty. It is apparent that the poorest in society will find high prices difficult, and we only have to look throughout the world to find that. As the population of the world reaches 7 billion, and moves towards 8 billion by 2030, we have a greater need to produce more food, and that is where I charge the previous Government, because for much of their final period in office they did not encourage food production. In fact they said, “We can import as much food as we like”; our home production did not matter.

We therefore need greatly to increase our food production in this country, and as other Members have said, we need to use biotechnology in order to do so and to reduce our use of fertilisers and pesticides. A blight-resistant potato is coming, and it could increase food production while dramatically reducing the environmental consequences of spraying potatoes, so there is much we can do, but we have to go forward and do it.

On the grocery code adjudicator, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who is no longer in his place, missed the point. If these wonderful supermarkets are not doing anything wrong, they have nothing to fear from the adjudicator. The point of setting up the post of adjudicator is to put him or her in place so that, if there is abuse, it can be looked at. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wants the role of the adjudicator introduced quickly, so we need to give the legislation parliamentary time. Farmers, growers and many other people in the food chain are often squeezed not only by the big supermarkets but by the big buyers in the chains, and that is why the adjudicator is so necessary.

I therefore very much welcome the debate and what the Government are doing to increase food production and ensure that common agricultural policy reform does not set aside more land and stop food production. There is a moral obligation to produce food not only for this country, but for the rest of the world.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for your time constraint.