Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis]

If Members do not mind, I will make a little progress now, because otherwise we shall be here all day.

Our Agriculture Act 2020 committed us to reporting to Parliament on food security in the UK at least once every three years. I have with me the excellent report that we published shortly before Christmas, and I commend it to colleagues. It is not a political document; it was compiled by Government statisticians, and it contains information about food security that will be extremely useful to Members in all parts of the House.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Research from the House of Commons Library shows that in my constituency, electricity and gas prices are up by £741 a year, the petrol price is up by 22%, and food costs have risen by £100 a year. Does the Minister really think that this is the time to be hiking national insurance contributions by 1.25%?

[Victoria Prentis]

I will come to that point later, if I may. At this stage, I want to say more about the food security report.

As I was saying, the first of these reports was published in December. It examines past, current and predicted trends. Food prices fluctuate in any given year. They depend on a range of factors, including food import prices, domestic agricultural prices, domestic labour and manufacturing costs, and exchange rates, all of which fluctuate over time. Some of these factors are influenced by our trading arrangements with other countries. Most food sector businesses are accustomed to fluctuations in supply chain costs, and they do not necessarily pass them on to consumers. Negative food inflation rates were recorded for much of late 2020 and early 2021, as we were in the earlier stages of the pandemic. We know now that, sadly, energy costs are rising substantially, and we are of course monitoring the effects of that on prices of products for consumers extremely carefully.

We carry out annual surveys looking at household expenditure on food, and we monitor that closely as well. Spending among the poorest 20% of households has been broadly stable for the last 14 years. Since 2008, between 14% and 17% of the expenditure of the poorest households has been on food and non-alcoholic drinks, while the average household has spent between 10% and 12% of its income on food.

EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 General Committees

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I am better late than never, Mr Stringer. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

It might be helpful to the Committee if I take a few minutes to explain the background to the documents and the reasons why the European Scrutiny Committee recommended them for debate. The Commission has long attached considerable importance to the more efficient use of resources within the European Union, and in July 2014 produced a communication on a zero-waste programme. That has now been superseded by a further communication setting out an action plan for the circular economy.

The action plan focuses on steps that can be taken at the EU level, including the design of products, consumer choice, waste management and the reuse of raw material. It also considers in more detail certain priority areas. The plan is accompanied by a number of proposed directives, set out in the other documents before us today, which would amend existing EU legislation on waste disposal, as well as on landfill, packaging and packaging waste, end-of-life vehicles, waste batteries and waste electrical equipment. Those include more stringent recycling targets and restrictions on the quantities of waste sent to landfill.

The Government note that many of the measures identified are already being taken forward by the EU and the member states and they stress the importance of any new legislation complementing, rather than duplicating, measures taken by individual member states. The Government have welcomed the broad direction of the action plan, which they see as adopting a more joined-up approach than that in the 2014 communication, but say that the likely costs, although difficult to assess, could be considerable and have an impact on a wide range of interests, including individual households. In addition, the Government have expressed a couple of subsidiarity concerns regarding provisions of the waste framework proposal relating to extended producer responsibility or “pay as you throw”, although the European Scrutiny Committee found that such concerns had not been set out fully.

The European Scrutiny Committee noted that the proposals are wide ranging and raise a number of important issues relating to their practicality and affordability, as well as to subsidiarity. It considered that today’s Committee would be a timely opportunity for the House to address that. It therefore recommended the documents for debate in European Committee A.