Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

Debate resumed.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

We will now have a five-minute limit.

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[Jo Gideon]

Absolutely—exercise and food go hand in hand in a healthy lifestyle.

There are plenty of fast food outlets in Stoke, but it is quite difficult to find nutritious options. It is not about eliminating all unhealthy choices or making us feel guilty about eating them: it is about increasing the choices available and ensuring that everyone can easily find and afford good food. I am reminded of the words of Lord Woolton, the Conservative party’s food Minister in the 1940s. He said:

“Feeding is not enough, it must be good feeding.”

Those words are as true today as they were back then.

Many colleagues have commented that my social media includes many posts of me eating a variety of what Stoke has to offer, from oatcakes—which are an important part of our culture and heritage—to healthy Sunday roasts. I have been surprised how popular the posts are. I do them to show food choices in our city and to promote local businesses and organisations through the medium of food. Food is central to our society, communities and daily lives. Food brings us together and allows us to share stories, ideas and cultures, and build wonderful memories, but food should not make us sick.

Currently, four out of five leading risk factors for disability, disease and death are related to poor diets. In other words, the British diet is making us sick. While the average percentage of adults living with obesity or excess weight is 62% in England, it is 72.8% in Stoke-on-Trent. The health profile for the area shows that in the majority of health categories—for example, cancer rates, cardiovascular disease, obesity, life expectancy, physical activity, smoking and alcohol—the situation is significantly worse than the national average. I cannot accept this. How can we level everything up if our people locally are getting more sick and dying earlier than people elsewhere?

That is why it is important that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Michael Gove, included the Government’s obesity strategy, and some policy recommendations from Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy, in the “Levelling Up” White Paper. However, more needs to be done. The “Levelling Up” White Paper sets a blueprint for future White Papers such as the Government’s formal response to the national food strategy. This must set out a bold, brave and ambitious set of immediately actionable policies to help everyone in Britain to eat well. The six non-negotiable actions include the “eat and learn” recommendation that includes mandatory accreditation for food served in school to ensure that high-quality and nutritious food is not a postcode lottery; school curriculum changes such as reinstating the food A-level and Ofsted inspection of such lessons; and mandatory reporting for large food producers and manufacturers so that we know the proportion of healthier versus unhealthy food that companies are selling, as well as other metrics such as food waste.

We need to look at the sugar and salt tax. We need to look at public procurement so that those in our public sector buildings get the healthy food that they deserve. We need to introduce a good food Bill. We need to ensure that all these strategies feed into each other making sure that we are the healthiest we can be. That is absolutely part of levelling up.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind Members not to refer to Ministers or Members by their names, please. I did not want to stop the hon. Lady’s flow.

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[Lee Anderson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I do not believe Mr Lavery is going to give way, so please save your voice for the rest of the speech. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. What did the Member say?

[Hon. Members]

He said, “Coward.”

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Please withdraw that word.

[Lee Anderson]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure that the hon. Member is not a coward.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you.

[Ian Lavery]

Mr Deputy Speaker, that has taken out a minute and a half of my time, but thank you very much for allowing me to continue. I am far from a coward, by the way.

The debate in here is quite often about relative poverty or absolute poverty, but that does not make any difference, man. We live in a country—the sixth richest economy in the world—where we have 4.3 million kids living in poverty, and we have 14 million people living in poverty. It does not matter how or what we claim about poverty, and it does not matter whether we have reduced it by 1 million or whatever. If we have millions of people in poverty, we should be bloody well ashamed of ourselves. It is a political choice and we can do things about it. We could have done something about it last night, but obviously we did not do what some of us chose to do and vote against the benefits uprating.

To move on very quickly, the fact is that there are them that have and them who do not. Is it not really embarrassing to this country when we have chief executives of energy companies, which have just made $40 billion in the last few weeks, suggesting that it is not bragging to say their companies are like cash machines? What does that make people in poverty feel? And we introduce a “Buy now, pay later” scheme and think that is enough support.

Thank you for your forbearance, Mr Deputy Speaker. In concluding, let us tax the super-wealthy, the Tory donors and the corporations—they are the real benefit cheats in this country—because, quite frankly, that is the only way we will start to tackle the inequalities and make life look much brighter for many people in our country.

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[Ian Lavery]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would like your advice about the intimidation that I seem to be getting from the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson). The last couple of times I have been in the Chamber, there have been some absolutely terrible remarks. I am sure you remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, the last time he had to return and apologise. How can this be stopped? How can we tackle it? If Members do not want to give way, they do not have to, but they should not suffer abuse as a result.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I was in the Chair the very last time this happened. That is why I intervened to say that the hon. Gentleman was not giving way. I could not hear what the hon. Member for Ashfield said, because I was talking when he said it, and he then withdrew it. However, Mr Speaker made it absolutely clear at the beginning of today’s sitting, after what happened on the streets of London yesterday, that we must all be temperate in the language we use, not only in the Chamber but outside it. I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members will take that on board before they stand up, and even when they make sedentary interventions, and that they are very temperate in the language they use.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I will have to reduce the time limit to four minutes in order to call a few more Members in, but we will not get everybody in, sadly.