Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
It is a great pleasure to respond to this debate with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison—I hope you are warmer than I am, having sat in what is quite a cold room for the entire debate. It has been a good debate, so I would like to congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on her success in securing it. We have had a good and serious debate across all parties about a serious, if somewhat complex and multifaceted, issue.
Food security is about land use, but it is also wider than that, so I will begin my response by explaining how the Government are approaching this issue in the round. I do not think anyone would argue that food security is not an important part of our national security. If they were going to argue that before covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, I do not see how they could possibly argue it after living through those occurrences and seeing the effects and implications that those unanticipated events had on our ability to be resilient in future unforeseen circumstances. Being open-minded to learn the lessons, and doing our best to anticipate what the challenges of the future might be, is an important part of how we develop a more resilient stance than we would have if our post-war complacency—if I could put it that way—had carried on without what has happened in the last few years.
Anticipating the challenges of the future requires a close working relationship with the food sector. I chair F4, which brings together the National Farmers’ Union, the Food and Drink Federation, the British Retail Consortium and UKHospitality. That group represents the food system from farm to fork, and ensures that we are prepared for disruption to food supply chains and that we can respond quickly to threats as they emerge. We have heard about some of the threats from right hon. and hon. Members today, ranging from cyber-security threats to threats from Ukraine. Nobody has mentioned pests or diseases, but that is another potential threat that farmers know only too well. We have sadly experienced that in this country while I have been a Member of Parliament.
Robust analysis and transparency are critical. That is why we will publish an annual food security digest report, in addition to the UK food security report, which is published every three years. The most recent was published last December. Those reports highlight how diverse international trade routes and resilient domestic production systems ensure that any disruption from risks, such as adverse weather or disease, does not affect the UK’s overall security of supply.
Figures have been bandied around by different people about the percentage of our food we grow ourselves. UK agriculture currently provides 65% of the food we eat—77% of what we can actually grow here. We may not be brilliant at growing bananas, even though people love to eat them. The figure rises from 65% to 77% if we take account of what we can grow in our climate. Those figures have been more or less stable over 20 years.
Recent geopolitical challenges have highlighted increasing risks to food security, but have also demonstrated the resilience of our food system. As we develop implementation plans for the food strategy, we are applying lessons learned from covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine about how to prepare for, respond to and recover from shocks.
For example, one of the lessons from covid-19 was the key role that local communities and food systems played in maintaining access to food, particularly for the most vulnerable. I know from my experience during that strange time that working with the local authority and local kitchens was a far better way of ensuring that those who had to shield had access to useable, nutritious food. That is why the food strategy will focus on strengthening local food systems.
I am working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions to end mass dependence on food parcels, which is a moral scar on our society. I raise that point because food security is also about the ability of every citizen to access the nutrition they need. The new crisis and resilience fund will enable local authorities to provide preventive support for communities and assistance to individuals facing a financial shock, improving citizens’ financial resilience and reducing the need for future crisis support.
We also face challenges to the resilience of domestic food production systems from soil degradation, disease and climate change. Those are critical long-term risks, but we should be clear that the impacts are here today. We need only speak to a farmer whose fields were underwater last winter and then parched and drought-ridden this summer. They would say that that is not a theoretical risk, but a threat to food production today. That is a threat we can manage because we need to take climate change seriously and do something about it, as we do with more conventional threats.
Wendy Morton
I am genuinely interested in what the Minister is saying about food and food systems, but how does she see the connection between that and our farmers? We do not want anybody to be reliant on a food parcel, but what is her Department doing to ensure that the food in a kitchen, in a parcel or on our shelves is produced by British farmers? That is at the heart of this debate: British food security.
Dame Angela Eagle
I was coming to that. I am happy to get across my view of what this should be. The food strategy that we published in July makes clear that we will act to ensure that our food system can thrive and grow sustainably and continue to provide a resilient and secure supply of healthy, safe and affordable food. It sets out that that should include investment, innovation and productivity, and a fairer, more transparent supply chain, which is why we are dealing with the supply chain adjudicators and introducing regulation on how to ensure fairness. Dairy and pigs are already in a process, but other work is being done for other sectors to ensure that a fair price is paid for the food that is produced, which is important.
Boosting the resilience of our food system will prepare it better for supply chain shocks and disruption. Some of what we have to do is ensure resilience to climate change, which will make us more resilient in the way in which we produce food. Environmental changes therefore go hand in hand with protecting food production. If we do not make our landscapes more resilient and more sustainable environmentally, it is likely that the productivity of our land will decline and it will be harder as the climate changes for us to guarantee reasonable food production. Some of those things bolster each other and should not be set against one another, as the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills said in her opening remarks. They can produce a more effective and more resilient result if we do them effectively and properly.
We already manage the resilience of domestic production through updated environmental land management schemes. The good news is that actions taken today to manage these immediate risks can also reduce the risk from climate change. There is a £7 billion farming budget focused on improving the resilience of our food systems. That maintains the Government’s commitment to farming, food security and nature’s recovery. It includes £5.9 billion for environmental farming schemes, £816 million for tree planting and £385 million for peatland restoration, all of which is vital for sustainability.
The farming budget will pay for land management actions that reduce flood and drought risk for arable systems and manage heat risk for livestock. The Government will also provide £15 million in funding to stop millions of tonnes of good, fresh farm food going to waste by redirecting that surplus into the hands of those who need it.
The new energy infrastructure and new homes are not a risk to food security. Today, ground-mounted solar covers 13,000 hectares of land, which is 0.1% of England and 0.15% of English agricultural land. Half the agricultural land generating solar power is still producing food because it is dual-use—there are sheep grazing, and so on, on it. By 2035, the plan is for the percentage to rise to 0.4% of England as we increase our solar power generation capacity from 18 GW to 75 GW.
To put that into perspective, golf courses take up 0.7% of UK land and grouse moors take up 4%. At the moment, solar is at 0.1%, with plans to go up to 0.4%. People may not like solar panels appearing in and around the areas they live in, but they are not a threat to food security.
Wendy Morton
I beg your pardon—the hon. Lady. Maybe one day! It is one thing to see a few sheep grazing under a solar panel, but my point is about agricultural arable land that grows crops. I have yet to see a solar panel in an arable field because I do not think that is possible.
Dame Angela Eagle
I was not trying to make out that arable crops could graze around solar panels—
Dame Angela Eagle
The right hon. Lady is correct, but I am trying to get this into perspective in terms of overall land use.
There have been many calls for the land use framework to be published. I hope I can reassure hon. and right hon. Member that we will publish it early next year. Having looked at some of it, I am totally fascinated by it; when we publish it, I think we will have very many interesting debates about what it demonstrates. As I see it, the food strategy goes together with the land use framework, which goes together with the farming road map—all of which are in parallel production even as we speak.
Robbie Moore
Cash flow challenges are hitting many of our farming businesses right now. Baroness Batters, of the other place, has produced a profitability review, which seems to be hidden in the depths of the Department at the moment. Will the Minister guarantee that the profitability review will be published this week, before the Budget, so that all our farmers, the stakeholders and us, as Members of Parliament, can scrutinise it and lobby the Chancellor to make the right decisions before the Budget next week?
Dame Angela Eagle
I do not think that the lack of appearance of Baroness Batters’s report has stopped anyone lobbying the Chancellor; lobbying is happening outside even as we speak.
Dame Angela Eagle
Of course it will be published, and it will be published this year. I cannot think of any Government who produce large reports on matters of interest in the week before the Budget. The hon. Gentleman can expect to see it this year, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told the EFRA Committee in evidence, I think last week.
I could understand why the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills would be worried if solar farms were planned to take up more than 0.4% of land in England in the next period, up to 2035, but they are not. Also, the 1.5 million homes that this Government have said they will deliver in this Parliament are likely to take up approximately 26,000 hectares, which is 0.2% of English land. That is quite a small land take to transform the lives of the many hundreds of thousands of people who are currently in need of homes. The Government are quite right to pursue a target of 1.5 million homes, and clearly one needs to build those homes on land. As I said, 26,000 hectares, which is 0.2% of English land, is the approximate amount of land that will be needed to ensure that we can house many people who currently do not have the prospect of having a home of their own.
Bradley Thomas
I want to give the Minister an opportunity to answer a question that I have asked several Ministers in the main Chamber. My constituents and I do not dispute the need for more housing in the country, nor do we dispute that it needs to be located in areas where people want to live, but what would she say to my constituents living across Bromsgrove and the villages—an area that is 89% green belt and 79% rural—when I tell her that, as a result of choices made by this Government, our housing target has increased by 85% while the housing target in adjacent Birmingham has decreased by more than 30%? Every area has to take its fair share, but does she agree that that is a grossly unfair imbalance?
Dame Angela Eagle
In the small amount of time left to me before the end of the debate, it is hard for me to answer the hon. Gentleman. It is not up to me to take decisions about local planning issues of that kind. That is what local plans are for.
I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for securing the debate. I know that she wants to say a few words, so I will sit down.