Food Prices and Food Poverty

Robert Flello Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

It is a tragedy that both breakfast clubs and after-school clubs are under threat. The chef Richard Corrigan did a film for Sky called “Richard Corrigan on Hunger” in which a lady who runs clubs that are provided for by a charitable provider, Magic Breakfasts, talks about children being admitted to hospital in the school holidays for malnutrition—that comes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) about the challenge that school holidays pose for families’ food bills—and scurvy appearing in children of primary school age, which I find deeply shocking.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I am listening with great interest to my hon. Friend’s speech. Does she accept that some of the problem is hidden, because really good, well-meaning staff at schools are finding ways of feeding children during the day? That is hiding some of the scale of the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Listening to the Secretary of State’s final comments, I thought for a moment that I had stumbled into some sort of parallel universe, because I did not recognise any of her claims about what the Government are doing. She talked about the freeze in council tax. First, some of the families we are talking about are so poor that they do not pay council tax. Secondly, in Stoke-on-Trent, as in other areas, the council has been so hammered by the cuts in support from national Government to local government that it cannot accept the bribe of a 2% freeze and will have to make increases to try to get back some of the money that has been ripped away from it.

I welcome this debate because it provides the other side of the “heat or eat” coin. We recently discussed in this House the situation whereby people have to make the choice between heating their home and having food to eat. Sadly, many people do not have that choice because they cannot afford to heat their homes or to eat properly. Many families cannot afford to put proper food in their stomachs, let alone heat their homes.

The problem is going to get worse. To be fair to the Secretary of State, she touched on this area, to a small extent. Back in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, we had cheap oil and we encouraged farmers, not only in this country but globally, to turn that oil into food by using machinery—whether milking pumps, tractors or heated greenhouses—to produce more food. The UK imports a huge amount of food—even things that we grow well in this country, such as tomatoes. We seem to have a fascination with buying imported tomatoes even during our tomato season. On imported foodstuffs, we bring into this country a large amount of soy to feed our cattle because of the ever-increasing demand for more milk production. As a result, oil prices are rising and will continue to rise further. As the years go by, the built-in link between the price of oil and the price of food means that the food prices that we have been used to will continue to increase as the price of oil goes up.

We need to wean our farmers off oil. Back in the ’70s, companies decided to produce ever-better strains of seeds. That was linked to the oil industry, because in order to grow those better strains, the farmers needed fertilisers linked to oil. As the weeks, months and years stretch out ahead of us, if we cannot reduce the constant link with oil, we will face an inexorable increase in the cost of food. We need to act now, and the Government need to act now, to start to break that cycle.

Food banks such as that at St Clare’s, Meir Park, in my constituency are doing fantastic work and helping the vulnerable in our society, and they have started only in the past year. In the 13 years of the Labour Government, for which the Secretary of State tried to berate us, they were not needed. I would like to see a country in which there were no food banks, of course—everybody would—but while we have the need for them, we must have them.

[Julie Hilling]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Trussell Trust estimates that 60,000 people got food from food banks last year, and that 100,000 will this year? It estimates that by 2015, half a million people will depend on them.

[Robert Flello]

Absolutely, my hon. Friend is correct: that is the scale of the problem we face. By 2014-15 half a million people will be looking to food banks, so how many people will by 2020, and how many by 2025, if action is not taken soon?

People do not want to go to food banks. They do not think on a Saturday afternoon, “Oh, I know, let’s pop to the food bank.” They do it because they have no other choice. They are people with pride and self-esteem, but they think, “Well, hang on, it’s that or starve.” What a contradiction it is that at the same time we are throwing away 7.2 million tonnes of food every year. It is unbelievable that we are wasting food on such a level. It is appalling, and a national disgrace.

Why is that happening? The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) rallied to the defence of the supermarket industry. I will make further points about that industry in a moment, but when it has food promotions such as two for one or three for one, it causes problems for families at the poorest end of the scale, who do not have a freezer and cannot store so much food. However, most of the problem comes from people such as—dare I say it?—us in the House. Mea culpa: at the end of Christmas and its excesses, we look at our own fridge or freezer and see that it is still full of food that was not needed. That food ends up going in the bin, at the same time as people—[Interruption.] Well, actually, I do not throw food away, but there are people who do.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

You don’t look as though you throw it away.

[Robert Flello]

My hon. Friend is quite right. However, let us not lose track of the serious point.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear to hard-pressed families in his constituency whether he is in favour of supermarkets and retailers offering buy one get one free offers, or against? I am sure they would be very interested to know.

[Robert Flello]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman asks that question. I would like the goods on the shelves to be at a fair price so that families can afford to buy one of something and do not have to go for a two-for-one offer to get the best value. I know that he is perhaps still an unpaid spokesperson for a supermarket.

There is a problem with the desire for perfect food, too. Our farmers are having to waste a lot of food because it does not meet some of the supermarkets’ requirements for perfect food.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Flello]

I will not, because I have less than two minutes to go. If there is time at the end of my speech I will allow the hon. Lady to intervene.

My final point is about the groceries code adjudicator. We need somebody who holds the supermarkets to account, because whether we are talking about the past two years, the previous 13 years—as the Secretary of State tries to shift the blame on to our side—or the past 20, 25 or 30 years, the supermarkets have been making money left, right and centre, hand over fist, but at the same time our farmers have told us that they are struggling. The number of farmers now is a fraction of what it was 20 or 30 years ago, and customers and consumers—our constituents—are suffering. We need the adjudicator. If the Secretary of State has a problem with the need for an adjudicator, the answer is quite simple: if the adjudicator is appointed and does not have any work to do, perhaps the post will have been a success because the supermarkets have realised that the game is up.

This debate is not about those of us who are in the comfortable position of being able to go out and buy what we want in the supermarket. It is about the poorest in our society, who may not have freezers and fridges, and cannot buy in bulk, or buy food when it is on offer. They are the ones who work and live from week to week—sometimes from day to day. The House and the Secretary of State need to provide a positive steer, to ensure that the most vulnerable families are looked after, helped and supported by all the machinery of government.