Fresh and Nutritious Food: Inequality of Access

David Chadwick Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)]

It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) on securing this debate, and I thank all those who have made relevant, if somewhat fast, contributions. It demonstrates how important these issues are, and how much more awareness has recently been raised about them.

We know that many households are struggling to afford food, particularly fresh and nutritious food, with some disproportionately affected, including low-income families and those with disabilities. We also know that our food environment is dominated by products high in saturated fat, sugar and salt, which are highly addictive, heavily promoted and readily available, as well as cheap, making it harder for people to make healthy choices.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South gave us a vivid example from his area of Castlemilk that shows how, even if people wish to make those choices, they cannot practically do it. The idea of having to make a six-mile round trip to buy a banana says it all, when other ways of getting to the nearest supermarket are so impossible for those on low incomes.

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Of course, but I have very little time to answer some of these points.

[David Chadwick]

Apples and pears provide essential nutrients, such as vitamin C and folate, and they count as one of our five a day, as recognised by the NHS Eatwell guide. Does the Minister agree that any attempt to include fruit juice in the HFSS category risks sending the wrong messages to families at a time when fruit and vegetable consumption is already falling, especially among children and those on lower incomes, as she mentioned?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Today’s debate is about those who do not have practical access to any such choice, because there simply is nowhere for them to go and buy it. The national child measurement programme’s annual report demonstrated the consequences of the inequality of diet. For reception and year 6 children, obesity prevalence was more than double in the most deprived areas, compared with the least. These trends have been allowed to increase over the last 14 years, and there is now a positive correlation between obesity and poverty, which we must break. That is why it is so important that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South has brought forward this small but perfectly formed debate on a really serious issue.

How can we bring to bear really creative solutions to these problems, such as the food deserts that my hon. Friend talked about? The Government have done some things. We have a food strategy that talks about how we can improve food price affordability and access to highly nutritious food. We are committed to making the healthy choice the easier choice, which is certainly not the case in Castlemilk in his area.

We know that the cost of a nutritious diet is currently too high, and we know, for example, that we can do some work on that through the Healthy Start scheme, which supports people to buy fresh or frozen fruit, vegetables, pulses, milk and infant formula, if they have children under four. Healthy Start makes a valuable difference to families’ ability to purchase healthy foods for their young children. The nursery milk scheme provides reimbursement to childcare providers for giving a daily portion of milk to children and babies.

We are taking action in schools, including by trying to improve the nutritional aspects of free school meals. We are reviewing the school food standards to ensure that schools provide healthy food and drink options and restrict foods high in saturated fat, salt or sugar, to reflect the most recent Government dietary recommendations. We have extended free school meals to all children from households on universal credit, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty and putting £500 back into families’ pockets ahead of the child poverty strategy later this year. Some 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education now receive a free meal on the basis of low income and an additional 1.3 million infants enjoy a free lunch-time meal. Our new free breakfast clubs will help around 180,000 children in the first 750 schools, around 80,000 of whom are in deprived areas. A free, nutritious meal every school day helps our children and young people to access healthy food and supports their education and chances to succeed in work and life. That is soon to be extended to 2,000 schools, with 500,000 more pupils being involved.

On the questions about food redistribution, we are looking at that in the circular economy strategy to see how we can make the best use of surplus food. On the point about KitKat’s marketing budget, you learn something every day—it is a bit worrying to contemplate that. There is new mandatory healthy food sales reporting for large food businesses. That will start to encourage the recalibration of food and its contents, which I hope will begin to make a difference.

We are restricting volume price promotions on unhealthy food—buy one, get one free promotions—which encourage less nutritious food to be even more available. We expect that to make a difference. We have given local authorities stronger powers to block fast food outlets near schools, and I want such powers to be used proactively. We are also consulting on a ban on the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children under 16, which tend to be bought by children who live in more deprived, low-income households and make it very difficult for them to concentrate. This is not just about policy generally but what we can do across the system to reduce food inequality and improve access to healthy, affordable food.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South talked about the really difficult choices that his constituents face. I am more than happy to meet him to talk about what might happen there. Many hon. Members have talked about the Alexandra Rose charity. There is an interesting thing going on across the river in Merseyside, in Liverpool, where a mobile greengrocer called the Queen of Greens takes food to places where there is no supermarket. It may be that in the interim, before he and his community in Castlemilk get the chance to have a new supermarket built, there are some creative solutions for taking nutritious choices to the community. That is why I agree so much with some of the points made about how local communities, community action and perhaps even co-ops might be able to make a difference in areas such as that. The more creative we can be in having faster solutions, the more we can ensure that the current generation get the nutritional support that they deserve, rather than having to wait perhaps years for a supermarket to be built.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South for raising this really important issue.