That this House takes note of the report from the Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Hungry for change: fixing the failures in food (Session 2019–21, HL Paper 85).
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to introduce this debate on behalf of the Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment. I start by thanking all the members of the committee for their excellent contributions to our inquiry. In particular, I thank my noble friend Lady Boycott, as well as Anna Taylor of the Food Foundation, who first suggested the idea for this inquiry. We were supported by two superb specialist advisers, Professor Martin White from Cambridge University and Professor Elizabeth Robinson from Reading University. We received over 100 submissions of written evidence and heard 44 oral evidence witnesses. Last but not least, I express our gratitude for the support of a truly outstanding team of Beth Hooper, the committee clerk, Sam Kenny, the policy analyst, and Rebecca Pickavance, the committee assistant.
The title of our report, Hungry For Change: Fixing the Failures in Food, neatly encapsulates our findings. Our witnesses told us that the food system in this country is broken and that the poorest people suffer the most as a consequence. In a moment I shall explain in more detail what this means and what we recommended as solutions, but I hope noble Lords we will indulge me if I start with a very short historical digression.
As the historian David Cannadine wrote:
“For most of recorded history … poverty was not a problem at all: it was a fact of life … Only … during the last two hundred years, has it been upgraded from an insuperable and ‘natural’ condition into an intolerable but solvable problem”.
He might have said “in principle a solvable problem”, because in the past 200 years, although we have had the means to eradicate poverty in Britain, we have not done so.
Perhaps the clearest manifestation of poverty is malnutrition. Some 100 years ago, malnutrition in Britain meant starvation. Although we were the richest country in the world in the late 19th century, malnutrition among the poor was rife. The Government took notice when they tried to recruit soldiers for the second Boer War in 1899: 80% of the recruits were deemed unfit to fight and the Army had to reduce the height threshold for recruits from five feet three inches to five feet because poor people were so short as a result of malnutrition. The Government of the day were shocked into action and set up an Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, which recommended that the poorest children in this country should be given free school meals.
Fast forward another 120 years, and today, according to official figures, between one in four and one in five children in this country still live in poverty. This is probably an underestimate, as the Government’s measure is based entirely on relative income and does not consider the cost of living a decent life. Today’s malnutrition associated with poverty manifests itself in two very distinct ways: either poor people cannot afford to buy enough to eat—they are undernourished—or they can afford or get access to only an unhealthy diet, commonly known as junk food, which might fill them with cheap and delicious calories but at the same time contribute to chronic disease and a shortened lifespan. The resulting inequalities are stark. Healthy life expectancy for the poorest decile in this country is about 53 years—nearly 20 years less than for the richest decile. By the age of five, children in the poorest areas are already twice as likely to be obese as children of the same age in the least deprived areas.
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I much regret my very early departure, due to health circumstances, from the Select Committee after one meeting in summer 2019. I was looking forward to its work and was not disappointed in the outcome. It is a very good analysis of the food system and its failures, and it provides solution after solution.
Food poverty, health and the environment provide a social picture of the present UK, and it is not a pleasing one. There is not a single one of the report’s recommendations I take exception to, which is more than can be said for the Government. The strong recommendations regarding the universal credit £20 uplift, free school meals, an obesity strategy, commercial incentives on processed foods and long-term food insecurity all require action this day.
I am afraid that the silo-working of government comes through loud and clear in the report. The present Government cannot be wholly to blame for that—it is a culture of which I have first-hand experience. What is more, I do not have the answer, except to say that strong and firm ministerial leadership from the top can have a major effect. We saw that with the programme to set up the Social Exclusion Unit in December 1997. Civil servants from across Whitehall queued up to work there.
Although it deals with England, the report also explores Scotland and Wales. There is far less silo working in the devolved Administrations—at least, that is how it appears from the outside. Certainly, the role of Food Standards Scotland is more holistic than that of the agency in England, because it retains the original remit of food safety, as well as nutrition and health.
I too was disappointed on reading the Government’s response to the report, given its flat refusal to consider some poverty issues and a constant refrain of “waiting for Dimbleby”. There are some points I refuse to believe or take seriously. Paragraph 129 states:
My Lords, as with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, it was a pleasure to serve on the Select Committee, chaired so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and staffed by our in-House team and the special advisers. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, the committee put forward a very impressive bid to tackle this issue holistically and coherently, looking in parallel at the issues of hunger, health and sustainability to try to develop some coherent policies.
My remarks will be brief because I must apologise to the House that I have to leave shortly for a meeting. I shall not be able to listen to everybody’s speeches. Therefore, I thought your Lordships should be saved from listening to me drone on.
Like the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Krebs, I was disappointed by the Government’s response. Since the report was published and the Government published their response, there have been several initiatives by the Government in this field, notably in the obesity strategy, where some of the approaches that they look to take will have unintended consequences—but there will be time enough to discuss those when the regulations on calorie labelling come before this House shortly. Other of the Government’s initiatives are far more welcome. I am sure that few Members of this House do not look favourably on the provisions in the Environment Bill to mandate weekly collections for food waste, which is an important step forward.
However, the stock response to the report seemed very much to be, “Well, we’re waiting for the food strategy from Henry Dimbleby and we will publish a White Paper in due course.” I wish to make one suggestion in regard to that. Our recommendation 51 was:
“The Government’s White Paper … must include a definitive outline of what constitutes a sustainable diet with regards to health, social and environmental impacts. It must be accompanied with a graded … plan and communications strategy to move towards this diet.”
My Lords, it was a privilege to serve on the committee that produced this report. It was my first experience of a committee in this House, and it set a very high standard. I too would like to thank my fellow members and pass on sincere apologies from my noble friend Lady Sater, who is so sorry that she cannot be here with us today to contribute, as she did so ably during our inquiries. I know that we are all grateful to our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I personally thank him for his patience, courtesy and, above all, his wisdom and knowledge, which were key to producing such an insightful and, I hope, constructive report.
As others have mentioned, we had a wide-ranging brief, but today I will focus on one aspect already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs: childhood food poverty. It is more than 80 years since George Orwell famously wrote, in The Road to Wigan Pier:
“Twenty million people are underfed but literally everyone ... has access to a radio. What we have lost in food we have gained in electricity. Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life.”
I wonder whether we have to ask ourselves: has enough really changed since then? Look under the surface and an estimated 11 million people, including around 2.8 million children, are living in poverty in the UK today. Look further still and you come to food poverty and food insecurity—the inability to secure food of sufficient quality and quantity to enable good health and enable you to participate properly in society.
According to the latest official data, approximately 1.1 million children are living in households classed as “food insecure”. For those children, the consequences of not being able to put decent food on the table can be literally life-changing. Food insecurity can cause anxiety and affect children’s academic attainment and therefore their future prospects—and, of course, it affects their physical health.
My Lords, I am thankful to Members of your Lordships’ House who sent me their best wishes when I was created, by Her Majesty the Queen, Baron Sentamu of Lindisfarne in the County of Northumberland and of Masooli in the Republic of Uganda.
“Masooli” means “plentiful place of maize”; it is the village where I was born and grew up. Today is my birthday, and it would have been Prince Philip’s 100th birthday. He rests in peace and will rise in glory. Lindisfarne needs no explanation, save to say that Aidan of Lindisfarne’s great passion was to help everyone in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, especially the poor, to encounter Jesus Christ, His compassion and His friendliness. He greatly valued education and the development of young people.
Therefore, I am honoured to be delivering my “maiden” speech in this debate on Hungry for Change. I thank the Committee and all those who worked hard to bring this to our attention. Already three of its members have spoken and I associate myself with their views. This report covers many burning issues facing us today of poverty, social justice, and education.
There comes a time in the life of a nation when a great crisis challenges a thoughtful Government to reimagine not only their own vision of themselves as a governing body but their vision of the kind of nation that they hope to govern in future. It is an opportunity for radical reassessment, calling for courage, imagination, and a readiness to set in motion practical actions which will have transformative outcomes in serving the well-being and flourishing of all. The United Kingdom is not short of people who are hungry for change and have good ideas, but it is short in discerning the ways of achieving sustainable change and stability. This report hints at it. Therefore, let us keep to task. I am very grateful for it.
In the first half of the last century, the crises we faced were two world wars, a pandemic, and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The result was a brave and radical reimagining, with some of the blessings that we enjoy today: the development of the “welfare state”—a phrase coined by Archbishop William Temple, instead of Beveridge’s “social insurance”—the great liberalising Education Act, and a National Health Service, the continued safety of which has been a key part of our Covid-19 response.
My Lords, I warmly welcome the former Archbishop of York, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, on behalf of these Benches and the whole House. It is a great privilege to follow him in today’s debate, on his return to the House, and I am sure that his wisdom, compassion, and insight, will be valuable as we move forward in this new parliamentary session.
Hungry for Change outlines the challenges in health and production underlying our food system. Like others, I pay tribute to Marcus Rashford for his campaign last summer in extending the national voucher scheme. I also wish him and the entire English football team good fortune for their opening Euro 2021 match against Croatia this Sunday.
Food poverty remains a serious issue here in the UK, one which has been exacerbated by the economic hardships endured by low-income individuals during the Covid crisis. The Department for Work and Pensions HBAI statistics for 2020 identify 5 million people, including 1.7 million children, as experiencing food insecurity, and half of them had very low food security. Part of the problem is the lack of non-credit based lifelines for people facing financial crises, forcing them to incur debt to pay for essentials. Often this is not a one-off situation but the result of chronic income shortages, particularly where social security payments are reduced to pay debts.
Christians Against Poverty reported that 37% of its clients have sacrificed meals due to debt. A further 56% have borrowed money to pay for food, clothing and other living costs. There is a health and human cost to this. Christians Against Poverty reported diabetic clients relying on sugar water because of insufficient food and parents who avoided eating dinner so that their children could eat each night. Surely this should not be happening in a country as developed and wealthy as ours.
My Lords, it is a bit daunting to follow a Bishop and an ex-Archbishop. I wish to congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, on the rare achievement of a second maiden speech in this House. I served on the committee too, and I would like to pay tribute to the way the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, conducted the committee and marshalled the views, not only of a heterogeneous committee, but also of a wide range of witnesses. I would also like to put on record my thanks to the staff in producing this report.
Food, from farm to fork, is by far our largest single industry. It has repercussions for difficult areas of public policy on health and diet, the local and global environment, air, water and soil quality, our nature, countryside and biodiversity. It is noticeable that the distribution of the benefits and detriments in the way we deliver food creates severe social inequalities and some serious health dysfunctions. Healthy food is often not affordable, particularly among our poorest communities.
In this report, we have attempted to deal with all aspects, with recommendations that will involve several departments beyond Defra and the Department for International Trade. The same will be true of the report we hope to see shortly from Henry Dimbleby, the second stage of which I hope the Government will treat rather more seriously than their response to this report has yet shown. Our media is unaccountable: for some reason, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, received rather less media attention than Marcus Rashford for his recommendations on school meals and universal credit. The Government did at least respond in part to that.
I wish to focus on a less obvious and more mundane aspect, which is the institutional one. My points relate to the structure of the food system as a whole and the ineffectiveness of the regulatory structure and enforcement we currently have. Our specific recommendations range from more effective local planning controls for retail outlets right through to the creation of an independent body analogous to the Committee on Climate Change. One key proposition is that we should reverse the decision made a decade ago and give the responsibility for nutrition, labelling and reformulation back to the Food Standards Agency.
My Lords, the importance of this Select Committee report cannot be overestimated, and I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for his chairmanship and leadership of the committee. I also thank my fellow members and the staff for their diligence and enthusiasm throughout the meetings of the committee.
There is no doubt that food, its quality, access and affordability, is fundamental in its impact on people’s lives, especially for children, as it not only affects their present well-being and health but will be a major determinant of their future lives and, indeed, their health and life expectancy. Yet, as the evidence in this report points out, and other Members have also pointed out, large numbers of children do not get enough to eat. They live in families that cannot afford enough food to feed them, let alone afford a healthy diet. I shall limit my remarks today to some of the recommendations relating to chapter 3 of the report and the Government’s response.
The report recommends:
“The Government should embed consideration of the cost of the Eatwell Guide into calculations of benefit payment rates ... the Government should undertake a fuller assessment of the cost of a healthy and sustainable diet. The cost of the Government’s dietary guidance should be built in as a reference point to consideration of government interventions, including those relating to welfare and public food provision.”
This seems to me to be a very important recommendation and, as others have said, we are disappointed by the Government’s response to it.
The report points out that families already disadvantaged are penalised through the benefits system.
“The Food Foundation estimate … that only 53% of households spent at least enough to follow the Government’s Eatwell guidance.”
As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has already said, the report also stated that
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Modern malnutrition is not the only factor, but the evidence we heard suggested that it is significant in contributing to these inequalities. The term often used to describe the stress of poverty and food is “food insecurity”, which the National Diet and Nutrition Survey defines as
“limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.”
The Government have not in the past routinely measured food insecurity, but in March this year the DWP estimated that 13% of children in this country live in low food security and 6% in very low food security.
Nothing that I have said so far is new, but successive Governments have done precious little about it, perhaps because it is often below the radar. Tia from Lancashire, one of our witnesses living with food insecurity, said this:
“You know everyone’s struggling but you just don’t know how much everyone is struggling because no one wants to talk about it. An older person who is struggling doesn’t want to talk about it because they feel embarrassed or they’re embarrassing their kids. Some people don’t want to talk about it in Darwen”—
where she comes from—
“because there is such a stigma.”
The pandemic has underlined the problems of food insecurity and food poverty. Obese people appear to be more likely to die of Covid-19. At the same time, we were told that food bank use—an indicator of food poverty —has risen by 81%.
I turn from describing the problem to some of our proposed solutions. We made more than 50 recommendations. Noble Lords will be relieved to know that I will not go through all of them; I shall highlight just a few. First, on the causes of food insecurity, many of our witnesses referred to universal credit. We were told that the five-week delay in receiving payment and the fact that the amount of benefit does not consider the cost of a healthy diet are major contributors to food insecurity. The Food Foundation estimates that the poorest decile of the population would have to spend 74% of their disposable income to eat according to the government guidelines for a healthy diet. Eating unhealthily is much cheaper. For the richest decile, the figure is just 6%.
Money is important but not the only factor. We also heard that access to healthy food—many people live in so-called food deserts—knowledge, time and the emotional bandwidth to think about diet and health were also important. We acknowledge that other select committees were investigating the universal credit system, but we recommended that the cost of a healthy diet should be included in the calculation of the quantum of benefit. We also recommended that the Government should address the problem of food poverty among those with no recourse to public funds and that the value of Healthy Start vouchers should be increased. Finally, we recommended that the Government should collect data on food insecurity through the National Diet and Nutrition Survey.
I turn to the food system. Many of our witnesses told us that the UK food system is not fit for purpose and they called for whole-system change. What does a food system actually mean? It refers to the way food is produced, processed, marketed, sold and consumed—everything from plough to plate. In comparison with other European countries, we eat a relatively high proportion of highly processed food, artfully constructed by the food industry to be cheap and delicious. We as humans are evolutionary programmed to like sugar, fat and salt, as these were essential for survival in our ancient history. It is cheap processed foods, high in sugar, fat and salt—commonly known as junk food—that contribute to dietary ill health and health inequalities.
On the basis of the evidence we heard, we recommended a series of changes to the food system to make healthier choices easy, especially for the poorest people in this country. These included restrictions on the promotion and advertising of unhealthy food—food high in fat, sugar and salt—and greater pressure on the food industry to reformulate highly processed food. We noted that there was good progress in the early days of the salt reduction campaign—I declare an interest as chairman of the Food Standards Agency when that was launched—but this appears to have stalled since responsibility for it was taken away from the FSA. We also heard that the soft drinks industry levy had been successful in reducing the sugar content of soft drinks and should therefore be extended to other products.
We felt that local authorities need to be given the powers and incentives to restrict the creation of new fast-food outlets, which are often the only way to get food in the poorest communities. We recommended a mandatory limit on the calories per portion in the out-of-home sector. When we asked a representative of the fast-food sector why it sells such massive portions of chips, he said, very honestly, “That’s because it’s about competition; the bigger the portion, the better value for money the people who shop for it feel that it is.” We concluded that labelling has a role to play but that it is mostly used by those who are least in need of help to improve their diets—the worried well.
Malnutrition starts in infancy, and the life trajectories of poor diet are set early on. I have already referred to the obesity figures for children by the time they are five years old. We made recommendations about school food and childhood nutrition. School meals standards should be properly monitored and evaluated—which they are not—and initiatives to address holiday hunger, as well as the national school breakfast programme, should be properly funded. I am sure that other noble Lords will expand on these points.
I turn briefly to the impact of food on the natural environment. At the time of our inquiry, the then Agriculture Bill was still in progress, and a number of our recommendations relating to it are now out of date. There is no doubt that, in this country and globally, food production is a major contributor to environmental damage—using fresh water, contributing to climate change and to the destruction of natural habitats, as well as the use of pesticides which pollute the environment and damage wildlife.
Three points are of continuing relevance. We recommended that the Government should include environmental sustainability alongside health in its dietary guidelines. As part of this, the Government should develop a plan to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, because we know that the consumption of too much red meat is bad for both health and the environment. Finally in this section, we recommended that the Government should adhere to their commitment to not allowing the importation of food produced to lower environmental standards than that produced in the UK, and not simply offshore the problem of environmental damage. I would welcome unequivocal confirmation on this from the Minister, particularly as I still hear the view from senior politicians that cheaper, lower-standard imported food will be beneficial for poor people in this country.
In concluding my summary of the recommendations, I return briefly to governance. Henry Dimbleby will shortly publish the second part of his national food strategy, following which the Government are committed to publishing a White Paper within six months. According to the Minister,
“This strategy will set out proposals that will aim to ensure that the food system delivers healthy, sustainable, affordable food for all.”—[Official Report, 20/10/20; col. 1473.]
How do we know that the strategy will be implemented? We recommended the creation of an independent oversight body, analogous to the Committee on Climate Change, to monitor and report on progress on implementation.
The Government’s response to our report fell broadly into three categories. The first was, “We are waiting for the national food strategy.” Part I of the national food strategy was published nearly a year ago, shortly after our report. It made a number of similar recommendations to ours. I am not aware that the Government have formally responded, and I hope that the Minister will update us. The second category of response was, “We reject the recommendations”—for instance, embedding the cost of a healthy diet in benefit rates; uprating Healthy Start vouchers; improving the poorest schoolchildren’s access to healthy food; giving local authorities more power to restrict new fast-food outlets; accelerating the reformulation of unhealthy food; and establishing an independent oversight body to oversee implementation of the national food strategy. The third category was, “We will consider further action”—for instance, restricting the promotion and advertising of junk food.
Overall, I was, frankly, disappointed by these responses. However, since then, we have seen some developments. Following Marcus Rashford’s campaign, the Government have committed to allocating additional money to support holiday free school meals. I hope the Minister will confirm that this will be a long-term commitment. The Government have announced that they intend to ban adverts for junk food before the 9 pm watershed and online, restrict in-store marketing and require calorie labelling in food outlets with more than 250 employees. I would welcome confirmation from the Minister that these plans will go ahead and some indication of the timeline. Last week, it was reported that, following a legal challenge, eligibility for Healthy Start vouchers will be extended to asylum seekers and immigrants without settled status.
In conclusion, I hope that these recent developments are a sign that the Government are at last taking the issue of poverty, diet, health and the environment seriously. I look forward to the contributions from other noble Lords, and to the Minister’s response. I hope he will update us on progress and assure us that, when it is published, the White Paper will really address the urgent issues in our report. I beg to move.
“The Government are also putting public health at the heart of everything we do.”
The evidence is the opposite. One sentence, which I will quote when I conclude, is a massive porky. I am afraid the Government’s response to the recommendations on food imports—from paragraphs 133 and 134 onwards—is simply not believable. All the evidence from trade talks points in the opposite direction. In the main, the Government’s response is shoddy and second rate.
I accept that the report is a year old, which is nothing in the scale of things. The note for this debate from the excellent Food Foundation is not a year old. I will list just a few of the policy changes it recommends, which support those of the Select Committee. It says that our food environment does not support healthy choices, particularly in low-income neighbourhoods. One in four places to buy food is a fast-food outlet. That is the average; it is higher in low-income authorities. Food and drink advertising is focused on unhealthy options: 17% on confectionary, 12% on soft drinks, 16% on snacks—and just 2.5% on fruit and vegetables.
On the affordability of healthy food, the Food Foundation points out that the poorest fifth of UK households would need to spend almost 40% of disposable income on food to meet the Eatwell Guide standards compared to 7% for the well-off. Calorie for calorie, healthier foods are three times more expensive than less healthy foods.
Finally, the Food Foundation finds that children from more deprived families have less healthy diets and experience worse outcomes from the food system. By ages four to six, the most deprived fifth of households are twice as likely to be obese than those in the least deprived fifth. In paragraph 31 of their shoddy response, the Government give a flat refusal to consider the committee’s recommendation to embed the cost of the Eatwell Guide in the social security system.
I want finally to refer to a key aspect of the consequences of lack of action. I realise that what I am about to say will not go down well in some quarters, but given that healthy eating leads to a healthy, longer life, it is clear that lack of action and attention leads to the conclusion that the Government are not too concerned about people not living longer, especially if they are poorer and maybe less likely to vote for them. The evidence is abundant.
Paragraph 165 of the report states clearly:
“The food environment has a substantially more negative impact on lower-income groups than … wealthier counterparts, and therefore directly contributes to rising health inequalities.”
This is a serious conclusion. The Food Foundation also says in its note that increasing vegetable intake, while reducing meat and sugar, so that everybody gets a five-a-day, could contribute eight additional months to the UK’s average life expectancy. The national life tables from the Office for National Statistics, published in September 2020 and after the report, show that life expectancy has slowed in the last decade compared with the previous decade. The ONS’s note says that
“a marked slowdown in the rate of improvements has been observed since 2011”.
According to the Marmot review, life expectancy has flatlined since 2010, which is the first time since 1900. According to Sir Michael Marmot’s evidence to the people’s Covid review, since 2010 we have lost a decade in terms of the public’s health. Marmot’s report in 2010, Fair Society, Healthy Lives, commissioned by Gordon Brown, was welcomed by the coalition Government, but they did not put any of the principles into practice. There was no interest in doing so. On 17 December last year, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said in answer to a question of mine about the stalling of life expectancy that it was “extremely worrying”. In fact, I can almost hear Johnson saying, “Poor people are poor because of their own fault and they die earlier as a result of their own lifestyles.” The Government’s response indicates that they plan to do nothing about this.
The executive summary to the latest Marmot review, Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On, states:
“The national government has not prioritised health inequalities, despite the concerning trends and there has been no national health inequalities strategy since 2010.”
That brings me to the porky in the Governments response—it is the final sentence:
“The Government of the day is always accountable to Parliament.”
I do not believe that this Government think that they are accountable. In my, now long, experience in both Houses, they are certainly far less accountable to Parliament than the Government of Margaret Thatcher. Frankly, we all need to wake up to this fact. Otherwise, we will get no action at all, which is at the moment causing poorer people to die earlier.
Choice is what we have in this country, and choice is what people should have in their diets, but I contend that it is the role of a responsible Government to give advice to individuals as consumers about what constitutes a diet that will support their health and the health of the planet. Since our report and the Government’s response were published, the Government have accepted as the sixth carbon budget the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, outlining that they support the delivery of a target of a 78% reduction on 1990 levels by 2035.
However, the Climate Change Committee was absolutely clear that a fundamental tool to achieve that target was a 20% shift away from meat and dairy towards more plant-based diets. We have yet to see the Government’s net-zero strategy, which will show us in some detail how they intend to deliver their new, welcome target for 2035, but it is hard to see how they would achieve it without taking forward the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee on diets. Not only should they accept those recommendations but, as the committee said:
“An effective strategy to tackle awareness of the climate impacts of what we eat is an essential part of our pathway.”
That was something that our committee made absolutely clear: that, as we move forward, the Government need to communicate clearly with the public, educating them about what constitutes a sustainable and healthy diet. When the Climate Assembly was brought together to look at how we can bring people along with us on the journey towards net zero, it was very strong on the need for people to be supported, educated and communicated with about the issues of a sustainable diet. It focused particularly on the areas of education, procurement and waste.
I can hear the Minister now saying, “Oh, it’s fine. She’s saying things which are all about the national food strategy and we can just say, ‘It’s lovely to hear what the House is saying and, of course, we will reply in due course’.” I am expecting that, so why did I bother to make my one point today? I made it because, before we get to the White Paper following the national food strategy, we need to address this issue of communication.
Of course, Public Health England has been disbanded, and, by this autumn, we will have a new centre for health promotion, which will be an in-house department—part of the Department of Health and Social Care. Therefore, there is a genuine question that needs to be answered now—I hope that the Minister will respond to this in his remarks at the end—about what Defra is doing now in terms of discussing the constitution of that new body to make sure that the issues around sustainable diet will be addressed at the same time as the laudable aims for tackling the nation’s health, making sure that the resources are there, the connections are made and the remit includes the issue of sustainability so that we can make those joined-up solutions. It will be a wasted opportunity if, by the time we come to the Government’s response in their White Paper, this new body, which will have significant resources to promote public health, has been set up and it is too late to include sustainability in its remit.
Replace Orwell’s “underfed” with “undernourished” and consider that children living in deprived areas are around twice as likely to be obese, with all the far-reaching implications that that entails. Of all the troubling evidence that we heard during the course of our inquiries, the most shocking came from Health Minister Jo Churchill, who told us:
“One in 10 children enters primary school obese, and that rises to one in five by the time they leave”.
I still struggle to come to terms with that statistic. In the years when we should be protecting our children the most—when they are at the beginning of their lives, with their futures ahead of them—we are failing them.
Our report made clear that there are three public food programmes, as mentioned—Healthy Start vouchers, free school meals and holiday hunger initiatives—that should be extended and reformed if we are to set about fixing this problem. The Government deserve credit for the changes that they have since made: they have increased the value and implementation of Healthy Start vouchers, and the DfE has announced an extension of funding for school breakfast clubs until 2023.
There have also been various interim measures, as government, local authorities and schools have had to deal with the fallout of the pandemic. However, while coronavirus has highlighted and indeed exacerbated the issue of childhood food insecurity, as we gradually make our way back to normal life, we still need long-term solutions to these problems. They were here long before Covid hit and will be here long after if we do not do something about them.
To this end, and with regard to Healthy Start vouchers, I ask my noble friend the Minister to clarify whether the recent increase is a one-off or whether the vouchers will be linked to the consumer price index, as recommended in our report? It is fantastic to see so many retailers boosting the value of these vouchers and offering various connected promotions. How do the Government intend to continue raising awareness of the scheme, particularly for individuals, as it is this that will ensure proper take-up?
On breakfast clubs, while the extension of funding is most welcome, the eligibility threshold remains the same, potentially excluding many of those in need. Could my noble friend confirm whether the Government will look at this and whether there is any intention for the National School Breakfast Programme to train facilitators to enable schools to access external funding in the future, which was the Government’s original intention, to sustain the scheme into the future?
Breakfast clubs are there to address a specific problem: quite simply, children are coming to school hungry, which inevitably affects their performance throughout the day. Holiday programmes fulfil a similar role, catching those most in need, when the schools are not there to provide for them. I welcome the Government’s initiative to extend the holiday activities and food programme across 2021, but I also ask the Minister whether work is ongoing to assess the need in the longer term? As I said, the threat from Covid may recede, but this particular problem is not going away.
Finally, I will address free school meals. This is a complicated area but, in a nutshell, by changing the eligibility rules from all those claiming universal credit to those with a net annual income of below £7,400, there is an understandable worry that many thousands of children will fall through the net. The Government say that the new rules will result in approximately 50,000 more children from low-income households becoming eligible. This may be the case, but the rules also mean that significantly more children—approximately 160,000, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies—will now be excluded from free school meals.
We were quite modest in what we asked of the Government, simply suggesting that they outline how they intend to mitigate the impact of their eligibility proposals. However, in the National Food Strategy, Henry Dimbleby went further, recommending that the Government should:
“Expand eligibility ... to include every child (up to the age of 16) from a household where the parent or guardian is in receipt of Universal Credit (or equivalent benefits).”
I agree with him.
It is not just about who receives free school meals but how they receive them. One young girl from Blackburn told the committee’s researchers:
“Because it was such a small school, everyone was friends with each other but I never wanted to use my free school meals because sometimes you had to go in with a massive pink slip to get them and I just felt too embarrassed so I sometimes got my mum to put money on my card so I could use that instead.”
No child should have to feel ashamed in this way. I ask my noble friend the Minister not only whether he will consider Henry Dimbleby’s proposals but whether the Government will look at how free school meals are administered?
There are many other questions that could be asked and many recommendations from our report that have not yet had a considered response. At the time, this was because the national food strategy had not then been published. Now that part 1 of that strategy has been completed, with part 2 due in the summer, I hope that the committee will receive the response that this report not only deserves but requires, given the urgency of many of the issues it has raised.
In the early years of this century, we have experienced two crises which offered similar moments for reflection, action, and reform. It could be argued that the financial crisis of 2007-08 was an opportunity missed for radical reform. I believe that austerity was the wrong medicine, and that it was applied for far too long. The second crisis is the Covid-19 pandemic. May we all learn the lessons and act on them. I am glad that our National Health Service is now the National Health Service and social care—so a full implementation of the Dilnot report is a must.
Thankfully, no one now talks about how there is no “money tree”. The furlough scheme and support for people’s livelihoods has lifted our gaze to the horizon of hope. We are all in this together, in word and in deed, in ordering our society, our politics, our economy, with well-being and human flourishing as our aim. As the late Lord Jonathan Sacks said in the introduction to his book, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times:
“Societal freedom cannot be sustained by market economics and liberal democratic politics alone. It needs a third element: morality, a concern for the welfare of others, an active commitment to justice and compassion, a willingness to ask not just what is good for me but what is ‘good for all of us together’. It is about ‘Us’, not ‘Me’; about ‘We’, not ‘I’.”
He goes on to say that we need some kind of moral community
“for there to be a society as opposed to a state. States function on the basis of power. But societies function on the basis of a shared vision of what unites the people who comprise it. Societies are moral communities. That was Lord Devlin's argument at the beginning of the great liberalisation debate in 1957.”
Even before the financial challenges and loss of livelihoods over the past year due to the various lockdown restrictions, the statistics for food banks told their own story of poverty, hunger, income inequality and the need to change. Just as the Covid-19 pandemic is a global challenge, food poverty is truly global, affecting the third world here, too, in the United Kingdom. Poverty—food poverty in particular—long predates the problems of the pandemic. It is good that the committee has already produced this comprehensive study of the elements which underlie the problems and is making serious proposals for change and reform. For example, paragraphs 68 and 69 of the report refer to the staggering increase in food bank use. This crisis of hunger is real. Marcus Rashford’s campaign calls us to slay this dragon together for the sake of our children —so well done, Marcus.
Consistently, research has shown that children need a good diet to learn effectively. When children come to school without having eaten properly, they are less likely to learn, thrive and progress, and their future chances will be impaired. That is why breakfast clubs were set up, so that those who are not getting a proper diet could be given the necessary advantages to help them flourish.
Last year, I led a debate in your Lordships’ House on income inequality. It was a debate of unanimity. Today, this report focuses on the dangerous consequences of food inequality and draws our attention to the costs of a healthy diet. We have heard in the last year of parents wondering if they can give their children more than bread and potatoes, and whether they should go without food themselves, or heating, to feed their families. How heart-breaking is that? Please, may the report’s recommendation in chapter 3 receive further assessment, so that practical proposals for radical change are brought forward.
A dismaying table at paragraph 173 on page 65 challenges all of us to have courage and imagination for our future, and the will and determination to see it through to its conclusion. Her Majesty’s Government has learned during the Covid-19 challenge that big government solutions are important for big problems. Free vaccination for all is a good example. Can the lessons learned be applied to government action for the health and well-being crisis? I pray that they can and will, and may it be soon, promising less and delivering more. This is a vital report which we want to take seriously. May the committee continue to work out practicalities which resolve. I congratulate the committee on this wonderful report.
As identified in the Hungry for Changereport, repayments of advance payments for universal credit often leave people without enough money for food, let alone a healthy diet. However, deductions for rent, utilities or council tax arrears, court fines or benefit overpayments also contribute to insufficient funds. As of January 2021, Citizens Advice estimated that
“over 3.5 million people are currently behind on council tax”,
largely due to lost income from the Covid pandemic.
The interconnectivity of health, food poverty and financial well-being calls for more generous repayment terms for both universal credit advance payments and other arrears, allowing for affordable repayments on an extended timeframe. The cap of 25% standard allowance does not factor in individuals who are already required to use part of their standard allowance to pay a rent top-up in cases where money provided for housing costs has been reduced.
One innovative way to deal with the issue of health and financial insecurity is the Centre for Responsible Credit’s Financial Shield programme currently being piloted in Lambeth and Southwark. The programme works within the existing NHS framework with GPs and community groups to identify individuals suffering poor health outcomes relating to debt. In particular, its joint debt protocol seeks to prevent creditors from competing for repayments from impoverished individuals. It organises repayment under a single recovery protocol, giving the debtor time and space without the threat of enforcement, which could further affect their health. Tackling the issue of arrears will inevitably lead to better health outcomes. Levelling up in the post-Covid era will require innovative mechanisms and ideas like the Financial Shield to tackle issues like debt and income insecurity that lead to poor diets.
On the production side, it is important that agriculture and food production are not treated in isolation but seen in the context of the overall sustainability of the rural economy and rural communities. Although agriculture is no longer the major source of employment it once was in rural areas, it continues to have a major impact on the overall economy and sustainability of rural areas. It is why the new environmental land management scheme, or ELMS, provides great significance to rural areas and the overall rural economy. We need to align the interests of our farmers and rural communities in tackling the issues of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Already, some of the pilot ELM programmes have raised concerns about ensuring the viability of farm businesses while delivering the vital landscape protections set out in the ELMS. Farmers want to do the right thing for nature but will need proper incentives, clarity of guidance and assistance. So I hope the Government will continue to monitor the situation and get this right when introducing the full scheme in 2024.
The increased focus on the importance of rural areas in providing natural capital and sustainable supply chains presents opportunities to create new, greener jobs. The Hungry for Change report focused on the need for stable and secure funding for research and development. I believe it would be a real boon to make rural areas the focus of this new infrastructure as part of a wider strategy to revitalise the rural economy. It is important the Government recognise the vital nature of rural economies in being at the very centre of the green revolution and come forward with a strategic vision for the rural economy that incorporates agriculture and food production, as promised in their response to the Lords Rural Economy Committee.
At present, our regulatory system on food is concentrated on the two ends of the food chain—farmers and their methods, and consumer protection. Underlying the totality of the chain is the domination in the middle of it by major, often multinational, corporate players who largely escape criticism. The regulation on farmers is arguably about to become more complex through the new subsidy system replacing the CAP, which most of us support. The operation of public goods will be extremely complex, and the proposed ELMS and related interventions on agriculture to deliver public goods will inevitably involve a very sophisticated form of regulatory intervention. At the consumer end, both the Government and the report propose more sophisticated systems of labelling and consumer protection for safety and nutritional reasons. Again, those will need to be implemented in a way that improves the consumer experience rather than confuses the consumer. Between those two, regulation is and will be much less.
However, this market is hugely dominated by a limited number of large companies in the middle: the big supermarket retailers—obviously; the big processors and manufacturers; the big wholesalers and importers; and the big catering chains and food service companies. Although there is a market distortion in terms of a tendency to both oligopoly and oligopsony, it is in those fields where the decisions of those large companies determine the nature, quality and standards to which food is produced, the availability of it, and the price, and therefore affordability, to the ultimate consumers. Standards formulation and pricing conditions and, of course, advertising—the primary information that goes to consumers and smaller retail outlets—are dominated by the priorities of those companies.
There have been previous interventions. The relationship between the big supermarkets and farmers and other first-line producers were supposed to be regulated, or at least overseen, by the groceries code. To be fair, some of the standards and contract formulations have significantly improved for small producers, but not only has enforcement been extremely light-touch, but the reality is that the groceries code deals with only a small part of the issue and is largely confined to the large supermarkets dealing directly with primary producers, whereas the reality is that virtually the whole of our largest sector, the food chain as a whole, is a markets and competition issue, with wider repercussions for consumer protection and health and environmental impacts.
Given the externalities we have been concerned about in this debate, on the environment and on health, we need to take further steps. To take two examples, advertising expenditure by the large companies in the food chain is 40 times larger on confectionery than it is on fresh food and vegetables. No wonder our consumer diets are so far from ideal. The balance of market power between processors and primary producers means that, for most farmers, there is no profit without subsidy, and the new agricultural regime will not change that. The office of the Groceries Code Adjudicator is inadequate to the task. We need a much more effective body and, although the report does not spell this out in detail, it points inexorably in that direction.
I have a final point. Trade is a vital part of our food chain and imports provide us with key products, but when most assessments of sustainability in our food system emphasise the desirability of shorter supply chains, the Government’s emphasis is to prioritise a trade deal with Australia—one which potentially undermines our environmental and welfare standards and which appears to be concluded without a view from the safeguarding mechanism we all agreed in the process of delivering the Agriculture Act: the statutory Trade and Agriculture Commission. If we go down that road, it will not improve the health and diet of our nation, nor will it improve the environment. It may drive out a few livestock producers, but it will provide no solution to the problem that this report identifies.
“the poorest decile of UK households would need to spend 74% of their after-housing disposable income on food to meet the cost of the Eatwell Guide.”
This seems absolutely breath-taking. What on earth is the purpose of recommending a diet that cannot be afforded by those who most need it? The Government must seek a fuller understanding on whether their dietary guidance is affordable if they are at all serious about fighting obesity. Healthy food costs much more, calorie for calorie, than unhealthy food, so it is no surprise that the poor suffer not only deprivation but threats to their own health from obesity through not being able to afford anything more than cheap food.
The report says:
“There are a series of hurdles to overcome to access a healthy diet.”
These mean that
“it is significantly harder for people with a lower income to access a healthy diet. The current food system requires much more of people with fewer resources.”
Yet the Government say in their response:
“To embed the consideration of the cost of the Eatwell Guide into the calculation of benefit and pension rates would require an amendment to the up-rating primary legislation.”
Really? Is this such a barrier to being able to include this in calculations of benefit to ensure that people receiving benefits are not excluded from healthy food as well, as so many other things? For these reasons, the Government say they will not be including the cost of the Eatwell Guide in the calculation of benefit rates. I believe this is a very damning indictment of this Government. What we are really saying here is that people who cannot afford food should not have access to a healthy diet, and I believe that most of us would consider that totally unacceptable.
The report says:
“The Government should be fully aware of the cost of eating the diet it recommends, and the ability of different demographic groups to access this diet. To underpin any national food strategy, the Government must, in its 2021 review of benefits rates, commit to giving its dietary guidance—the Eatwell Guide—a firm place in the development of policy.”
I believe this is crucial to any future food policy.
“Written evidence from the Government stated that income-related benefit rates: ‘Derive from a review in the 1980s’ rather than being based on a ‘single mathematical calculation or historic set of rules’. This means that benefits are not based on an understanding of how much things cost or a representative household budget.”
Again, the Government’s response is at best underwhelming and at worst quite shocking:
“PHE will explore options on assessing the cost of a healthy balanced diet”.
I suspect that most of us would think Public Health England probably has quite enough on its plate at the moment and that there really is a clear need for action. We heard repeatedly from people giving evidence to the committee that the Government have carried out repeated consultations, investigations and inquiries, and that much has been written, yet little is being achieved.
“Given the enormous economic cost to the NHS and wider society of failing to encourage healthy diets, we find it puzzling that the Eatwell Guide is not used by the Government in the calculation of benefit payment rates. Ensuring that the large (and, recently, dramatically increasing) number of people in receipt of universal credit are able to afford a healthy diet could be a sensible economic step”,
we are told in the report.
The fact that healthy food is not affordable by poorer families particularly penalises the poor, and disadvantaged children will suffer the future costs of poor health and the threat of obesity in adulthood. Not including the cost of food in the calculation of benefit is a huge mistake that will be paid for in costs to the NHS of this regressive and damaging policy. Should not any policy of recovery from the pandemic include measures to invest in the health of our nation, in terms of reform of our food systems, as this report proposes? We should be using this opportunity of building back better to face up to the issues of food insecurity, diet-related ill-health and food sustainability described in this report. The report provides not only a vision of what could be achieved but a comprehensive plan for achieving it, and I very much hope we will pursue its objectives into the future.