Sustainable Development Goals

Debate between Rory Stewart and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, I am able to confirm that. I hope my distinguished colleague the Chair of the International Development Committee will also feel that we have been quite rigorous and quite tough on ourselves, and have set quite high standards. This is a very open society, and there is no point for us as a Government in trying to hide. The statistics are out there in public, and people can see them from the Office for National Statistics, so we have tried to be as fair and frank as possible about the challenges we face and what we have achieved.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that the UN special rapporteur described the levels of poverty in the UK recently as “systemic” and “tragic”—I think those were the words—and that seems to have been rather glibly dismissed by some of his colleagues. Of the five goals on which the UK is focusing when it comes to the voluntary national review, why is goal 2—ending hunger—not in there when we know that the extent of food poverty, particularly childhood food poverty, in this country is so extreme?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a good challenge, which I think will come up again and again in these debates and in the response to the reviews. We have significant problems in our country—people will refer to, for example, food banks. I recently had a conversation that got to the heart of the matter with a Nigerian pastor who has just begun his ministry in Croydon. He was reflecting on his experience of poverty in Britain and in Nigeria. He said that there was definitely poverty in both contexts, but that it was very different. His brother had just died in hospital in Nigeria because he was unable to access basic healthcare. Of course, in Croydon, he deals with people who have significant problems, particularly with income. He talked about women who are struggling to afford sanitary products and about food banks. However, he also said that it was worth bearing in mind that those people have completely free access to healthcare and education, a water supply and shelter, so we come back time and again to the relationship between absolute and relative poverty.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

The Secretary of State is giving a characteristically thoughtful speech. I do not want to cast any doubt on what he is saying—I agree about the need to cross party boundaries when we try to find solutions to these issues—but I wonder whether it is really possible for him to do it from the Department for International Development, as opposed to, say, the Cabinet Office, leading on the domestic delivery of the sustainable development goals. Will he say a bit about how he can persuade his perhaps less thoughtful colleagues to come to the table?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Lady has put her finger on a very important point. In the end, it is all very well setting these kinds of goals, wearing the kind of badge that I am wearing and signing up to the things that we believe in, but this is about leadership right the way through Government. It is about people sharing a vision of the kind of world we want to live in and of what sustainable development means, feeling in our bones and sinews the connection between our contribution to poverty and the environment and how cities, communities, clean water, clean air, gender equality, productivity and employment all come together not only to provide a society that we are proud of, but perhaps above all—as Britain continues as a partner with the world—a world that we can be proud of: a world that is greener, fairer, more united.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

11. What estimate he has made of the number of people who become homeless immediately after being released from short prison sentences.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Far too many people on short sentences—almost 35%—struggle to find suitable accommodation. That is why we are now focusing on a pilot in Bristol, Pentonville and Leeds. We not only want to get ex-offenders into accommodation, but are putting £6.4 million into ensuring that they have right kind of support, with up to five hours a week on life skills and financial management skills, and access the right services.

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[Rory Stewart]

First, I pay tribute to Revolving Doors, which is a very impressive charity. I am afraid those are not the figures we have in the MOJ, but I am very happy to sit down with Revolving Doors and understand how it is arriving as such figures. Broadly speaking, sadly, the level of homelessness among people on short sentences has remained, in our terms, relatively static over the past decade, but I respect Revolving Doors, and I am very happy to look at that evidence with it.

[Kerry McCarthy]

When prisoners fall on that fine line between being criminals and actually being victims of crime themselves—I am particularly thinking of young people who are caught up in gangs and county lines-type drug dealing—what support is being given to them to make sure that if they are rehoused, they are rehoused away from the scene from their offending, so they are in a safe place and do not get dragged back into gang activity?

[Rory Stewart]

This is a very good challenge. We can use licence conditions to try to ensure that somebody does not return to the scene of their offending. The problem, as the hon. Lady will be aware, is that we of course have to balance that against the importance of family relationships for rehabilitation. We want to try to locate someone in a place where they will not be tempting into further reoffending, but we do not want to locate them in a place where they lose all contact with family and community.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

As the hon. Lady mentions, the situation at Liverpool Prison was very disturbing. I have visited Liverpool Prison, and mental health provision is now significantly better than it was at the time of the inspection—I spent quite a lot of time with the mental health staff there—but there is a broader issue. Although we are reducing suicide, there is still far too much of it happening. A lot of this will be about making sure not only that we deal with drugs, but that we have the right kind of purposeful activity in prisons, so that prisoners do not feel the temptation to take their own life.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

17. What research his Department has conducted on the cost-effectiveness of providing legal aid for early legal help.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Kerry McCarthy

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

6. What discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on the implementation of the Government’s report, “Agenda 2030: Delivering the Global Goals”, published in March 2017.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Rory Stewart)]

As the hon. Lady knows, the UK was at the forefront of drafting those goals and is leading a great deal of the implementation. We published our report on 28 March. DFID leads on international implementation, and the Cabinet Office is ensuring that the single departmental plans drive it through domestically.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Minister will know of my interest in food waste, which is addressed by sustainable development goal 12.3. Does he agree that it is not enough just to have a DFID-led approach? We will not be able to help farmers in developing countries unless we also tackle the relationship with supermarkets in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 4th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

One less well-publicised deal the UK has been negotiating with our European partners recently is the circular economy package, which could not only bring about significant environmental benefits, but create jobs and growth. The Government, however, do not seem to have a strategy for achieving the ambitious waste targets set out there or for unlocking the economic opportunities that would come from greater resource efficiency. When are we going to have a proper waste resources strategy from the Secretary of State?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

The circular economy package is absolutely central, and we are looking closely at it. We sat down with a number of different people last week specifically to address it. The key is in getting the right balance between preventing the resources from being wasted in the first place and the targets that the European Union is setting, but I absolutely agree that this is vital and I am very happy to include the shadow Secretary of State in these discussions going forward.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Minister for that response —I hope the Secretary of State can reply to the next question. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation says that the huge growth in plastics production means that by 2050 there could be more waste plastic in the sea than fish. Just 5% of plastics are recycled, 40% end up in landfill and a third end up polluting our ecosystems. What is the Secretary of State doing to combat plastics pollution? For starters, how about doing what President Obama has just done and ban microbeads in cosmetic products?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the final details of the Lincshore scheme, to which the Environment Agency is committed. The work, particularly the movement of sand, has taken the level of protection from one in 50 years to one in 200 years. That is something of which the House should be very proud.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

6. What steps the Government plan to take to meet the UN target of halving food waste by 2030.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her extraordinary work on this matter, and for her private Member’s Bill, which she introduced yesterday. As she is aware, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, through Courtauld 2025, is taking considerable steps towards the achievement of that target.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Minister for the interest he has so far shown in my ten-minute rule Bill. Under previous Courtauld commitments—the first three phases—80% of the reduction in food waste has come from households. There is still the real problem that more than half of food waste is in the supply chain. Does the Minister agree that we should leave it not to the voluntary action of food companies, but place a legal requirement on them to help us meet the target of halving food waste?

[Rory Stewart]

I am happy to sit down with the hon. Lady and look closely at the details of the Bill. Certain retailers, such as Tesco, are beginning to make huge progress, as she knows. Recently, there have been studies on, for example, bananas in the supply chain, and an app has been launched with FareShare to enable charities to get food from supermarkets. That is a good example of progress, but I am happy to learn more.

Food Waste

Debate between Rory Stewart and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 11th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

I pay great tribute to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for the leadership that she has shown on this subject for a long time, and for raising the issue again so powerfully. It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope; this is only my second time standing here.

There is basically broad agreement in this room and around the country on the importance of the subject. Increasingly, Britain has been a global leader in tackling food waste. We need to do more, but there is a great deal of achievement for us to be proud of, particularly achievement by non-governmental organisations, the charitable sector and politicians such as the hon. Member for Bristol East over the past few years, and particularly since 2007.

As all hon. Members have pointed out, food waste is an issue requiring urgent action worldwide. Many Members have remarked that about one third of the food in the world is wasted. It is a tremendous waste not only of food but of water, energy, land and money. Agricultural land, for example, consumes about 70% of the world’s fresh water. In an era of rising population and global warming, we have a strong moral obligation to conserve those resources. I know that many people—not necessarily in this room, but in debates on this issue—focus on the economic arguments, but at the heart of the argument about waste, particularly food waste, is the depletion and degradation of precious resources. As hon. Members have pointed out, half of all food waste is produced by households: it amounts to nearly 7 million tonnes of food, worth about £12.5 billion a year, or £60 a month for an average family. Huge tribute must be paid to those who have taken action to address the issue, such as Love Food Hate Waste.

The hon. Member for Bristol East set the parameters for this debate. She provided a fantastic overview of the problems and progress since 2007, including Government legislation and the actions of NGOs. I will not recap those arguments, but she seemed to focus on four issues that were most urgent, in terms of my response as the Minister. One of them was about the contribution to the UK charitable sector that could be made if we were better at finding ways to get food to charities. She produced the astonishing figure, which I would be happy to explore further, of hundreds of millions of pounds in potential donations to charities. She discussed the notion of a good samaritan Act. One has been passed in the United States, but it has not yet been tested in law there, and she pointed out some of the issues involved. In terms of my answer to other hon. Members, the hon. Lady has laid out some of the complexities involved in the issue.

The hon. Lady also mentioned food waste on farms, which was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). We discussed that in great detail. The Government have been considering food waste on farms—waste that occurs before food reaches the supermarket—along with NGOs. We are considering whole crop purchasing, which could address the issue of people rejecting strangely coloured tomatoes. Take the example of class A, class B and class C tomatoes; one could imagine an individual retailer distributing them according to whether they were to be sold loose in a shop, to be processed, or to go into soups and sauces. Clearly, we need to do much more of that. The gleaning movement has brought attention to how much is left in the fields unnecessarily.

The hon. Member for Bristol East mentioned supermarkets not reporting in detail which individual supermarket has which amount of waste. In other words, the data are grouped together by retailers into a single unit, from which it is difficult for us to disinter those data. Her argument, which was about transparency and specificity—how on earth are we supposed to hold people to account if we cannot work out how much individual people are doing?—seems to me to be a good one.

The hon. Lady also talked about the importance of targets and how they might be used to drive action. One striking thing about the United Kingdom, looking back to 2007, is that we seem to have exceeded comfortably most of the targets that we have set ourselves so far. One debate that goes back and forth in the European Union is whether such targets are achievable, and what their marginal costs are, but we in the United Kingdom can take a certain amount of confidence from our ability to exceed those targets in the past.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I accept that we have exceeded the targets, but there is then the question of whether the targets were ambitious enough. It is easy to exceed targets if they are set very low. Perhaps we ought to try to raise our game by setting ambitious targets for the next phase of Courtauld.

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[Rory Stewart]

Yes. As the hon. Lady will realise, the challenge of setting the right target is that it is difficult, thinking forward to 2030, to work out what is desirable, feasible and affordable, and what the different cost-benefit calculations will be. There will always be a tendency on the part of any Government, whether the previous Labour Government or ours, to set targets that are achievable. Equally, we need to be pushed to work harder; we need ambitious targets to make us get out of bed in the morning and shove towards them. I am happy to sit down and examine those targets in detail and talk through the constraints.

The more good ideas people have and the more technological solutions are developed, the easier it will be for us to meet those targets. To take an example from the debate on Tuesday with the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) about targets for nitrogen dioxide emissions, a leap forward to electric vehicles would totally transform our ability to meet those targets if we do not make enough progress in 10 years. It is not quite the same with food waste, but there are many ideas. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) pointed out the numerous innovations in food that could help us reach those targets. I am happy to discuss that in more detail.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) discussed fantastic models for community shops. I want to talk about that more generally at the end of this debate. Much of what the Department is taking away from this debate is that the best examples are at local level. It is not a question of civil servants from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or Ministers having all the bright ideas; we should be listening much more attentively to what is being generated by the NGO sector, community shops and individual constituencies, and learning from them.

My hon. Friend made a good point about the French model. He and the hon. Member for Bristol East discussed the astonishing statistics and why France appears to be able to conserve such a staggeringly high proportion of food. One thing that I genuinely do not know and would be very interested to talk about is the extent to which French fiscal instruments, particularly the French ability to count food donations and donations in kind against their tax bills, does or does not provide a perverse incentive; we need to focus on that. If the result of those instruments is to increase the amount of excess food that the French produce, because they are confident that they can then receive donation-in-kind tax benefits from disposing of it, that is not something we would want to encourage. We need to be very careful with these tax incentives to ensure that trying to do something that we want to do—making sure that that food gets to people who really need it—does not end up encouraging people, in a perverse way, to produce more food than they need to.

[Kerry McCarthy]

In response to the Lords Committee’s inquiry, the Government said they would not reassess their opposition to fiscal measures to increase food redistribution before considering the European Commission’s communication on sustainability of the food system. I understand that that communication has now been shelved—we had waited quite a long while for it to be published—and that a more ambitious circular economic strategy will be published later this year. Will the Minister take part in discussions on whether we can include incentives for food waste distribution in that strategy? I appreciate that it is very early days for him in his job, but I urge him to do so.

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and I will take on that message. However, having got into trouble on Tuesday for speculating about Treasury fiscal measures, I will not say anything about that issue at all. Nevertheless, the point is taken; we need to concentrate hard on this matter. Basically, the way that we will make progress on this issue is by sitting down with people who know a lot about the subject, such as the hon. Lady, and getting them to hold us to account and push us to do better. I am very happy for that to happen.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion talked about farm-gate food waste; we discussed how whole-crop purchasing should help, and it will be interesting to see whether we make as much progress on that as we hope to. We talked a little about the French model. It would be interesting to know whether there are things that the UK can contribute to other countries, as well as things that other countries can contribute to us. For instance, I would be interested to know whether our supermarket ombudsman model is something that we might want to share with other European countries as an example of best practice. There are things we can learn from other countries, but there are things that the supermarket ombudsman here is doing well to cut down on food waste, even by signalling to retailers in advance the dangers of a supermarket ombudsman intervention. Perhaps other EU member states could learn from that.

The hon. Lady asked what my Government colleagues were doing on food poverty, food waste and charities. The answer is that the Cabinet Office is joint chair, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, of a redistribution food round table; the Department for Education has a school food plan, having introduced, as she will know, universal free infant school meals last September; and the Department of Health provides “eatwell plate” guidance. There is also an NHS Choices website, which helps with menu guides.

The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West gave a really good series of examples from Zero Waste Scotland. I would like to talk a little more about this issue in detail at the end of the debate, but Zero Waste Scotland is a very good example of the range of initiatives across the UK, some of which are funded by Government, some by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and some by philanthropic donations, which are changing the way we look at food waste.

I was particularly struck by the hon. Lady’s intervention on the subject of composting. It is absolutely true that traditionally, when we look at the hierarchy of waste in relation to food, we prefer to eat food; our next preference is to have animals eat it; and then we eventually consider how we might extract energy from it, for example through anaerobic digestion. However, her point that food put into composting can save endangered peatlands is a very important environmental argument, and a real reminder that we need to keep looking at issues really broadly. One of the dangers in a lot of discussions in this area is that we can miss potential environmental benefits by getting so tightly attached to a particular model or hierarchy that we fail to consider, for example, the relationship between composting and peatlands. I do not want to move to a world in which we encourage people to over-invest in composting at the expense of eating, but it is worth bearing in mind that composting has not only an anaerobic digestion energy benefit, but a benefit to endangered habitats. I also liked the reference to doggy-bags; the hon. Lady made a very good argument for them.

The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) said that there were many challenges, and many things with which she was uncomfortable or unhappy. Of course, I am delighted that she welcomes the 25-year strategy, although I note that she has concerns about its content. So long as I am fortunate enough to be a Minister, we shall not step back from the subject of waste. A great deal of progress has been made. I would be delighted to meet the industry representatives she mentioned.

The hon. Lady asked specific questions about Europe. I am going to the Environment Council in Luxembourg on Monday. Clearly, European negotiations are extremely complex and we must ensure that we get different Government Departments to agree, so I am not in a position to make promises about exactly what we can deliver. However, our Department will certainly try to be thought-leaders and challenge other people in this field, and we will try to get what I hope will be ambitious responses from that European process.

The specific question about the Waste and Resources Action Programme and its charitable funding brings me to the core of this whole discussion. WRAP is a really impressive charitable organisation. It receives Government funding; this year, it received about £13 million. It employs about 200 people. The Government are not in a position to make promises about continuing funding a specific charity. However, WRAP seems to do a very good job, and on the basis of its performance to date, I reckon that it would be in a very strong position to continue to bid for support. WRAP has also been very good at diversifying and finding in-kind donations, which has had an added benefit: in some ways, it has pursued programmes in quite an edgy and creative way, which it might not have done before it applied to broader sources of funding. WRAP is certainly very impressive.

The Back-Bench Members who have spoken in this debate and are still sitting in front of me—my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, and the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion, for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, and for Bristol East—represent four different parties in Parliament. I am surprised that the fifth party is not present; I am not quite sure where the Liberal Democrats are in this debate. Nevertheless, I am very proud that there is a Conservative representative, a Green representative, a Scottish National party representative and a Labour representative here in Westminster Hall. Their presence is a reminder of how much importance we should attach to parliamentary work on this issue. The hon. Member for Bristol East pointed out how landfill tax, for example, has totally transformed recycling and waste. That is a very good example of the fact that Parliament has some levers and can bring about change.

The hon. Lady gave a good example from Belgium that shows that civil society and Government working together, rather than alone, is the key to resolving these issues. She talked about how petitions drove the Belgian process. To put that in context, the 200,000 people who signed that petition in Belgium, which is a country with a population of—

[Kerry McCarthy]

That was in France.

[Rory Stewart]

Ah. So there was no Belgian petition?

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Belgians were the first to pass the law on food waste in May 2014, but the example I gave about the bleach being poured into the skips and the related petition was from France, and the French law on food waste has just gone through.

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the hon. Lady; I stand corrected. I was getting my Belgian and French petitions confused. But the conceptual point I wanted to make is that this process, whether in France or in Belgium, is about driving civil society actions, through petitions, alongside Government action.