Food Prices (Planning Policy)

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Huw Irranca-Davies

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Streeter. I thank the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) for securing the debate.

I had a few anxious moments when I thought I had wandered into the wrong debate, because it seemed to take some while for us to get around to looking at what domestic land use policy might have to do with food prices. I was interested that we looked at oil, climate change, population growth, bad harvests and renewable energy. All those things are, of course, relevant to food prices. However, I was not convinced of their relationship to planning policy in the UK. Perhaps we can talk more about that in a moment.

I was interested that some Members seemed to argue for more Government intervention in planning policy. At one point I thought the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) was arguing for more Government intervention in the markets. Sadly, he let me down by saying that was perhaps not the correct approach.

We did eventually return to the issue of food production. Members raised a number of legitimate concerns about land use policy. I was not so convinced by their suggested solution. They flagged up the central issue at the heart of planning policy: balancing competing interests for land that, as the hon. Member for Sherwood rightly said, is in finite supply.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the distinction between short-term and long-term imperatives, which can conflict. We do not want to revisit some of the policies of the distant past. The peat bogs of the hills of Plinlimon were irrigated and freed for food production in the 1940s and 1950s, understandably at that time. We now have to undo the damage by blocking them up again to restore the carbon locked into the peat bogs. We need to focus on reconciling conflicting objectives and on taking a long-term view about what planning controls are for.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I was about to come to. Some hon. Members have suggested a solution. Part of the solution has to be a national, strategic plan to set out clearly where the priority areas are for farming and food production, and how we are going to manage the need for renewable energy in future. I do not think it is acceptable for us simply to stand up and say we do not want to have wind farms in a particular area. We need to say where and how we will meet the nation’s energy needs.

I had another few anxious moments when I thought the hon. Member for Sherwood was simply going to make a case against having new housing or growth in rural areas. That anxiety was again unfounded, because he did not say that. However, I know he has in the past argued against development in former mining communities in his area, saying that large five-bedroom houses are not appropriate. I am unclear why that is the case. I do not think it fits the Prime Minister’s aspiration nation to say that because currently there are no three or four-bedroom houses in those areas, there should be none in future.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. However, it is an argument in support of localism, not an argument in favour of not having any growth locally. The point of neighbourhood planning is to encourage local communities to think about where they want growth.

I digress a little, so I want to get back to the issue.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I want to pick up on my hon. Friend’s point on a genuine cross-party basis. Matthew Taylor, the Liberal Democrat, brought forward a good report while Labour was in power. He was commissioned to produce a report on housing. It went to the heart of how to reconcile local aspirations for housing with local opposition to housing. How can it be made to work? We are still struggling with that dilemma. Localism is all well and good but when localism both opposes and supports development, there is a bit of a conundrum.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, but that is exactly the issue that the planning system is supposed to resolve.

I fully recognise the important issue of food prices and congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood on raising it. Last year about 130,000 people turned to food banks to meet their families’ daily needs. The number is growing weekly. I am sure a lot of hon. Members will have recently taken part in the FairShare campaign organised by Sainsbury’s to collect food in their local supermarkets. Such is the degree of need in our communities. Indeed, we see more and more families who are simply not able to feed themselves because of rising food prices. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation says that cereal prices could be 20% higher over the next decade, and that will eventually lead to higher food prices in our shops.

I am not sure whether the point was made by the hon. Member for Sherwood, but the UK produces about 65% of its own food, so domestic land use policy clearly has a significant role to play in keeping food prices low and, critically, affordable. We therefore need a planning system that supports vibrant communities and Government policy that encourages long-term sustainability—exactly the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies)—and builds on a sustainable rural community and economy. Things have to change somewhat if we are to achieve that, in particular in the face of some of the wider issues raised by the hon. Member for Sherwood, such as climate change and alternative land use challenges.

This year alone, the UK’s harvest was down 15% because of the unusually wet summer weather. Such unpredictability is set to worsen and will lead to a need for, possibly, a change in Government policy and, certainly, more intervention. The Government’s record to date is not good.