Sewage Pollution: Whitburn

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

My constituent Mr Latimer has been raising concerns about raw sewage dumping at the Whitburn end of Seaburn beach and into the North sea for two decades. In October 2012, before I was his MP, the European Court of Justice found that raw sewage was being dumped at this location and that the United Kingdom had failed to fulfil its obligations and breached standards for treating wastewater.

In 2020, eight years later, the ECJ found again that the levels of sewage dumping at Whitburn continued to breach standards. As the sewage flows, our gorgeous beach is continually damaged. The wildlife and sea life that once inhabited our rock pools is disappearing. Dolphins and seals, regulars on our coastline, now swim through sewage soup and the seagrass meadows in the nearby River Tyne estuary are being ruined.

Mr Latimer is now supported by the Whitburn residents forum, and nearly 1,000 residents have signed our petition to stop this sewage dumping. In the nine years that I have been the MP for South Shields and part of this campaign, I have seen us stonewalled by various Departments, bodies, companies, Secretaries of State and Ministers who claim this sewage dumping is a figment of our imagination. It is not. We know that, because we live there.

We all know that this Government are not really committed to protecting our water and seas after their shameful behaviour last week, voting in favour of sewage dumping into our waterways and oceans. The Minister claimed that this was due to costs of up to £660 billion associated with upgrading our sewers—costs that today have been discounted via a leaked report from the storm overflows taskforce, which found that the actual costs, spread over 10 years, would be £21.7 billion. I am aware that the Minister was concerned that the cost would fall to consumers, but since the industry has paid its shareholders in excess of £50 billion over the last three decades, it would make sense for the water companies to meet the costs.

This week’s U-turn on the matter will not fool anyone. It is a disingenuous attempt to appease the public. If the Government really did care about sewage dumping, why have they sat back while knowing that Whitburn is continually being blighted—

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Scott Mann.)

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

After the judgment in 2012, the UK was given five years to correct the situation. The correctional work was completed by the end of December 2017. In those years, I continued to correspond with various Secretaries of State regarding my constituents’ concerns and requests for information. I was advised that Mr Latimer’s requests, via me, had become repetitive and created an unreasonable burden on the resources of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency. It was then decided that no further requests or queries would be responded to. Of course the requests have been repetitive; it is because answers and solutions have never been forthcoming.

In January 2019, our hardworking and effective MEP, Jude Kirton-Darling, raised the matter again with the European Parliament. Guess what? It found that the UK was still in breach, and sewage continued to harm our beach at Whitburn and our sea life. It asked yet again that the United Kingdom fully comply with the 2012 ruling and explain what action it intended on taking within two months. It appears that the Government never bothered replying and never took steps to halt the sewage discharges.

In early 2020, I raised the matter yet again with yet another Secretary of State, eight years after the initial request to rectify the problem. I was advised that DEFRA does not believe there are problems with the sewage system at Whitburn and that the beach was classified as “Excellent”. Now, everything in South Shields is excellent, but that definitely does not mean that sewage is not being dumped on that beach. By October 2020, a further letter from the EU confirmed that new evidence showed that, both in terms of frequency and quantity, dumping levels continued to be breached, reaching almost 53 tonnes of sewage in the first six months of the year. As a result, it also confirmed that it was commencing infringement proceedings.

And so it went on, with more meetings and more correspondence. The Environment Agency, Northumbrian Water and the Government all dispute the findings. It is a bureaucratic nightmare, where everyone has a different version of the levels of sewage being dumped, everyone continues to claim that it is not up to them to sort it out, and no one seems able to provide any update at all on the infringement proceedings. I, my team and my constituents are exhausted and angry. This obstinance has to stop. I cannot imagine the cost to the public purse of these years of avoidance. We—the people who actually live in South Shields and use Whitburn beach—know that sewage is being dumped there. We see the damage that it is doing to our coastline.

In the Environment Bill debate last week, the Minister said:

“The Government are absolutely committed to reducing sewage in our water. Nobody thinks sewage in water is a good idea, and I hope we have demonstrated that we have been very strong on that.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2021; Vol. 701, c. 865.]

Today I am pleading with the Minister to do once and for all what her predecessors have refused to, and outline what steps she is going to take to clean up our beach. That is the only way truly to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to and strength on this matter.

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

It is a pleasure, as ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see you in the Chair. I thank the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for securing this debate on sewage pollution. Sewage is obviously quite a topic this week. I do not know whether securing this debate was a coincidence, but it is certainly the subject in which we have all been much immersed. Water quality is a Government priority and it has been one of my personal priorities since becoming the Environment Minister.

I want to get something very clear at the outset, as there were some somewhat aggressive comments right at the beginning of the hon. Member’s speech. This Government are totally committed to protecting the environment—that is why we are bringing forward the Environment Bill, a landmark piece of legislation—and totally committed to protecting our seas. Spurious comments made about the Government voting to allow raw sewage into the sea are completely inaccurate, as has now been pointed out on many fronts.

A really aggressive social media campaign is being run on this, to the detriment of many MPs, including death threats. We all need to act with a little more kindness and respect in this Chamber. We voted for six pages of measures in the Environment Bill when I was here last week at the Dispatch Box, and they are all things that will prevent raw sewage from going into the sea.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I would like to correct some of the Minister’s points. I was not aggressive; I was stating facts. I am very disappointed that people have had death threats, and of course I would not condone that. I was simply relaying facts and what happened in last week’s votes. If the Government were confident about last week’s votes, why on earth have they U-turned?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for that. There has been no U-turn whatever. As I said, we have six pages of clauses in the Environment Bill committing to reducing sewage in our watercourses, all with essential steps that we have to take in order to fully tackle this whole issue. We have now announced a legal duty on water companies to take action to reduce harm from overflows. I am going to outline all the overall measures that we are dedicated to in this Government. There has been no U-turn whatever. Again, that is spurious spinning of the facts. I want to get that on the record.

I will talk a little about the sewer systems, to get all that clear. Many of our sewer systems are combined systems where sewage is combined with rainwater. During and after heavy and prolonged rain, the capacity of combined sewer systems can be exceeded. Storm overflows were a design feature of the Victorian sewers. They act as a release valve to discharge excess sewage in rainwater into the rivers and the sea if the capacity of the sewage system is exceeded. This protects properties from flooding and from sewage backing up in these kinds of extreme weather. Historically, they were designed only to be used in very infrequent, exceptional weather, but water companies are now relying on them far too often. Water companies have failed to adequately reduce sewage discharges. That is unacceptable, and I have said so unequivocally. That is why we are taking action, particularly through the Environment Bill.

I want to lay out the sources of pollution that we are dealing with in our rivers and marine spaces. The largest contributor to water pollution is agriculture—that is, 40% of pollution—and the water industry accounts for 36% of water pollution. Of that, a fifth is from the storm sewage overflows, but four fifths is from water that is already treated in treatment works and goes into the river. A lot of that contains too much phosphate, for example, which is one of the things polluting our rivers. That is just to get this into perspective.

Clearly, action is necessary to tackle the issue on all fronts. That is why we are asking the water industry to do so much more on the environment. However, I want to put on the record that investment in this area since privatisation has been over £30 billion, so the water industry has actually invested a lot of money since 1990. Some £3.1 billion is being invested in storm overflows between 2020 and 2025. But to tackle the increasing pressures on our water environment, we really do need to do more. Reducing the frequency of the use of the storm sewage discharges is really important. On those grounds, I recently set up the storm overflow taskforce, which was tasked with a whole lot of assessments but also reporting back on what the cost of total elimination of the storm overflow outflows would be, as well as on a range of other combinations in reducing their use.

I want to take issue again with the stats. Nobody gave spurious statistics about this. The taskforce’s report is shortly to be published. I will share some stats with the hon. Member as she raised the issue and we need to get the record straight on that as well.

To reduce these overflows to zero, the taskforce has come back after much research to say that the cost would be between £150 billion and £300 billion. That would be done through increasing the size of the infrastructure, but there would still probably be some use of the overflows if we have massive storms. If we then wanted to completely separate our system so that we had one pipe for rainwater and one pipe for sewage, the taskforce estimate, after much research, that that would cost between £350 billion and £600 billion. The hon. Lady will be able to see that data clearly published, potentially tomorrow. We are happy to share that data with her just to get that really clear.

I have referred to some of the other measures that we are implementing to show we are determined as a Government to tackle the issue. We have set a new set of strategic priorities for the industry’s regulator, Ofwat. It is the first time any Government have set the direction in which water companies must take steps to significantly reduce the frequency and volume of sewage discharges from storm overflows. The regulator should ensure that funding should be approved to let the water companies do that. That is a really important point. As the Environment Secretary set out yesterday, we will now put that instruction on a firm legal footing. So no U-turns have occurred; this work was all in train. That direction will be enshrined in law.

I will just look in detail at the comprehensive measures we already voted for last week in the Environment Bill, which demonstrate we mean business on tackling storm sewage overflows. Together with the legal duty, the direction to Ofwat and the targets that will be set on water quality, the Bill will make a significant difference. Last week, on 20 October, the Government put forward six pages of new law on this issue, of which the hon. Member should be completely aware. Just in case she is not, I will run through what those things were.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The Minister is being very generous. I am fully aware of what is in the Environment Bill. This debate this evening is about a particular issue that has been ongoing in my constituency for more than 20 years. I was hoping that the Minister would come here tonight to discuss that, not what the Government are going to do in the future. She is already aware of the problems at Whitburn; we have corresponded about it repeatedly. I would like to know what action will be taken for me and my constituents, because this problem is ruining our beach and has been for decades.

[Rebecca Pow]

I am very well aware of that, but it was the hon. Member who started on all these other, much wider areas, so I thought I would set the record straight. The point is—I will get to her area—that all these measures should and will make a difference in her area. That is the point.

There is a duty on the Government to publish a plan before September 2022 to reduce sewage discharges from storm overflows, a duty on the Government to report to Parliament on implementing the plan, a duty on water companies to publish data on the storm overflow operation on an annual basis, and a duty on the Environment Agency to publish data on storm overflows from water companies.

Further amendments set clear objectives, such as a duty on water companies to report discharges occurring and ceasing in near real-time—within an hour. That should really help in the hon. Lady’s constituency, and she should be on that to make sure it happens. There is also a duty on water companies to put gadgetry up and downstream of the outflows to monitor them. Again, that will genuinely help if there is still a problem in her area.

We are looking at schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 on sustainable urban drainage and we are bringing in sewerage management plans. The water company in the hon. Lady’s area, like every water company, will now have to produce drainage and sewerage management plans so we can clearly see their power of direction and how they will reduce the use of storm overflows.

I now turn to the bit the hon. Lady has been waiting for on Whitburn. I hear what she said. My intelligence tells me that a great deal of work has been done in her area to intercept storm overflows and decrease the frequency of the discharges. I believe there is an out-to-sea discharge that is 1.5 km out.

The sewage interceptor scheme that protects the bathing waters that the hon. Lady mentioned was completed in 2017, as she said, at a cost of £10 million. The idea was to tackle any sewage discharges. The scheme includes a combination of storm water storage, removing surface water in sewers, and sustainable urban drainage systems—including, interestingly, rainwater gardens at some local schools. The stats tell us that the bathing waters have continued to receive excellent quality status, which is what we want for our bathing waters.

The stats and the intelligence that the hon. Lady has recounted tonight are contrary to the data that I have. On those grounds, I would be very happy to meet her to look at what she is saying. I am the Environment Minister and I care about water quality, so I am genuinely slightly mortified to hear that different data. Clearly, a lot of parties are involved and she seems to have engaged with many of them. I am happy to meet her, as I will any Member of Parliament who comes to me with any environmental issue that I think is not right. I will leave it there.

Question put and agreed to.

Agriculture Bill

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. Given covid-19, I want to pay my great tribute to all the health workers across the country, and also the food producers, farmers, deliverers and those who process the food to get it into our shops and to consumers. It has never been so important to have home production and good-quality food in this country. It is not only farmers and growers who want that; so do the supermarkets and other retailers and the consumers. We are all working together to deliver higher and higher standards, better welfare and better environmental conditions.

The whole raison d’être of the Bill is to move us in the direction of higher welfare and environmental standards, looking after our land and soils, holding back water and having better flood protection—all of this working together. But farming, and especially commercial farming, needs to be able to produce food and to do so competitively. As Government and Opposition Members have said, there has never been more of a need to deliver sustainable, good, affordable food in this country than there is today.

I very much support new clause 1 from my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and, naturally, new clause 2, which is in my name and the names of the EFRA Committee members. This is about having equivalence of production on imported food, so that it is WTO-compliant, and it is very much about getting very good trade deals in future. I want to see British lamb and more cheese go into America. I want to see everything being exported to America, and I am very happy to have imports from America in a new trade deal, but they cannot undercut our present production methods and animal welfare.

I will say this clearly to the Americans: if we look at American poultry production, we see that they use chlorine wash for about 25% or 30% of that—for the lower end of their production, where the chickens are more densely populated and there are much poorer welfare and environmental conditions—to literally clean it up so that is safe to eat, and of course, in doing that, they reduce the cost of production, but they also reduce the welfare of that poultry. I would say clearly to the Secretary of State for International Trade that she should spend her time going out and dealing with a trade deal that has equivalence and making sure that we export our very important animal and environmental welfare. And I would say to the Americans, “Why don’t you upgrade your production? Why don’t you reduce the density and population of your chickens? Why do you not reduce the amount of antibiotics that you are using, and then you will produce better chicken not only for America: it can also come into this country?”

Let us not be frightened of putting clauses into the Bill that protect us, with the great environmental and welfare standards that we want the whole Bill to have, and that farmers want to have. I think we all accept that the common agricultural policy has not been a huge success. Therefore, we can devise a better Agriculture—and food—Bill, and that is what we have to remember: agriculture is about food, and it has never been more important than now to have high-quality food. If I get the opportunity, I will most definitely push new clause 2 to a Division and I will most definitely support new clause 1. There are also Opposition new clauses that I am also prepared to look at, because I think we have to make this Bill good. It is no good being told, “Don’t put it in the Agriculture Bill; put it in the Trade Bill.” When we try to put it in the Trade Bill, it will be out of scope. We are being led down the garden path—we really are —and it is time for us to stand up and be counted.

I want great trade deals. I am not a little Englander who will defend our agriculture against all imports—quite the reverse. I think competition is good, but on a level playing field that allows us to produce great food and allows our consumers to have great food, and makes sure that we deliver good agriculture and environment for the future.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]]

I would like to speak to amendments 23 to 25 and record my support for new clause 7. That I am speaking to these amendments should come as no surprise to the House since they are the contents of my Food Insecurity Bill.

Since 2017, I have been pleading with the Government to introduce a simple, cost-neutral measurement of food insecurity into the household surveys that they already conduct. Each time hunger is raised in this place, various Secretaries of State and Ministers have denigrated statistics from charities, researchers, food banks and colleagues, claiming that the figures are not robust enough or that the information is not reliable enough to inform Government policy. Denying the accuracy of the data or simply turning a blind eye allows them to pretend that the problem does not exist, but it does, and it is only by knowing the true scale of UK hunger that we can start to mitigate it.

When I introduced my Bill, the United Nations had estimated that 8 million people in the UK were food insecure—that is 8 million people who could not afford to eat and who did not know where their next meal was coming from. More than 2,000 food banks that we know of have become an embedded part of our welfare state and are the only port of call for those experiencing the harsh and unforgiving welfare state cultivated by this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

We do want to see an end to live exports, and we will soon be consulting on measures to improve the welfare of live animals in transport. We hope that ultimately the effect of this will be an end to live exports overseas.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

My constituent, Mr Latimer, after exhausting every avenue to halt the flow of sewage on to the beach behind his very popular restaurant, ended up filing a complaint with the European Commission. The ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that the Government needed to rectify the problem within five years. That was eight years ago. Can he expect any action from this Government?

[Theresa Villiers]

I am certainly happy to look into that case and come back to the hon. Member.

Agriculture Bill

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The United Nations estimates that over 8 million people in the United Kingdom suffer food insecurity—over 8 million people who are unable to afford to eat or who worry where their next meal will come from. I am astounded that we have been presented with an Agriculture Bill, which should have food at its heart, that contains nothing to address the growing levels of desperate hunger in the UK on this Government’s watch.

Any Bill concerning agricultural markets and our food chain should also address the end of the food supply chain: consumers and, more importantly, the impact of food insecurity on them. Globally, there have been predictions that we are heading for a serious food shortage as early as 2027. As populations rise, conflicts spread and more extreme weather affects food supplies, it is clear that food insecurity will become an even more important issue.

The all-party parliamentary group on hunger, of which I am a member, has taken a deep look at the growing issue of UK hunger. Over recent years, we have found that austerity, punitive welfare reforms, benefit cuts, and inaction on low pay and insecure work, as well as the widening gulf between incomes and the cost of living, are the main drivers of UK hunger. We also found that 3 million children are at risk of hunger during the school holidays and that 1.3 million malnourished older people were

“withering away in their own homes”.

I have received answers to parliamentary questions showing that rising levels of hospital admissions for adults and children because of malnutrition are costing the NHS £12 billion per year. We now have approximately 2,000 food banks—that we know of—and evidence has shown time and again that food-bank use alone is an indication of last resort. There are legions of hidden hungry who do not go to food banks and do not ask for help, either out of shame or embarrassment, or because they do not know where to go.

Each time that I have raised the issue of hunger in the House, various Secretaries of State and Ministers have denigrated statistics from charities, researchers, food banks and colleagues, claiming that the figures are not robust enough, or that the information is not reliable enough to inform Government policy. Denying the accuracy of the data or simply turning a blind eye allows them to pretend that the problem does not exist, but it does.

This is where my Food Insecurity Bill comes in. All I am asking is for the Government to replace redundant questions in an existing UK-wide representative survey—such as the living costs and food survey that they already conduct—with questions pertaining to hunger, and place the results before the House on an annual basis. The Bill is therefore cost-neutral and will give a true, robust and reliable measurement of UK hunger. It is backed by more than 150 MPs from all parties, dozens of peers, 30 organisations and 77% of the public. The cross-party all-party parliamentary group on hunger and the cross-party Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have also advocated such a measurement.

Despite all that support and repeated correspondence with the Minister of State, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, the Government remain dogged in their determination not to implement my Bill. I hope that today the Secretary of State will see the merit in adding the asks of my Bill into this Bill. In a country as rich as ours, no one at all should go to bed hungry and wake up hungry. The fact that so many people do is an abject failure of this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We are looking forward to discussing this in Committee and looking sympathetically on well-made cases.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The Department’s own family food survey found that even when poorer households buy cheaper food, they still spend a higher proportion of their income on it than average households, because of low wages. Does the Secretary of State still stand by his patronising comments that poorer people find “solace” in eating cheap junk food?

[Michael Gove]

My comments to the all-party parliamentary environment group, which were inspired by a very good question from the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), were explicitly designed to say that we should not patronise or judge people on poorer incomes for the choices they make. I know that the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) is very busy, but had she been there she would have had a better understanding of the context in which those comments were made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Not only do we hope to introduce legislation to improve the courts’ powers and access to additional sentencing sanctions for those who are responsible for acts of horrific animal cruelty, but we also want, as was confirmed by the Lords Minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union last night, to introduce legislation to ensure that the principle of animal sentience is recognised and, indeed, enhanced after we leave the EU.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T7. My Food Insecurity Bill contains a cost-neutral proposal to measure UK hunger. It is supported by 77% of the public, over 100 MPs across the House, two cross-party groups and more than 20 organisations, but it is not supported by the Government. Why?

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady knows why, because I met with her to explain it. The work is already being done. A Food Standards Agency food survey asks exactly the questions proposed in her Bill, and we also have the annual living costs and food survey.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

I have already replied to the right hon. Gentleman about this point through answers to written questions. The Environment Agency has traced the waste oil to a potential polluter, but I cannot give further details due to the ongoing investigation. I assure him that the Environment Agency carries out pollution prevention visits at industrial premises along that area and, of course, we are still working to clean it up.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Last week’s Brexit paper referred to the availability of food, but made zero reference to the scandal that one in 12 British adults had gone a whole day without it. Why do the Government not care about people going hungry?

[George Eustice]

We do care about people going hungry. We have a number of initiatives to support food banks and ensure that food is redistributed. We are also reforming and improving the benefits system to help people back into work, which is obviously the best option.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

We have a strong dairy industry in this country, and there are lots of opportunities of that nature. We have established the food innovation networks, and we have the agritech fund and a number of other funds to support innovative product development of that kind.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

9. What assessment she has made of the potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on food prices.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

Energy prices and exchange rates are the key drivers of change in agricultural commodity markets, and they affect all the countries in the world, irrespective of whether they are members of the EU. Following the sharp spike in food prices in 2008, they levelled off in 2014 and fell by about 7% over the following two years. In the past year, they have seen a modest increase of about 1.3%.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister for his response, but the fact is that the Office for National Statistics is reporting a surge in food prices that is likely to continue. Children are returning to school hungry after the Easter holidays and elderly people are being admitted to hospital malnourished, but still the Government refuse to measure hunger and food poverty levels in this country properly. Is it not the case that they refuse to measure those things because if they did so, they would have to admit some culpability?

[George Eustice]

No, the hon. Lady is wrong; we do measure them. We have the long-standing living costs and food survey, which has run for many years and which includes a measure for household spending among the poorest 20% of households. I can tell her that household spending in those poorest households has remained steady at around 16% for at least a decade.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

1. What steps her Department is taking to measure levels of household food insecurity.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

We have a well-established living costs and food survey, which has been running for many years and which informs our “Family Food” publication. It includes questions on household spend on food, including that of the lowest 20% of income households. This figure has remained reasonably stable, at around 16%, for many years.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

May I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, because I believe it is your birthday? Happy birthday, Mr Speaker—I hope you have a good’un!

I thank the Minister for his response, but he knows as well as I do that that is simply not good enough. An estimated 8.4 million people in Britain live in food-insecure households. There have been repeated calls from me, the all-party group on hunger, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the Food Foundation, Sustain and Oxfam for the Government to adopt a household food-insecurity measurement. Why will the Government not just admit that the fact is that their resistance to introducing such a measurement is because once they have admitted the scale of hunger, they will have to do something about it and admit that it is largely caused by their punitive welfare reform policies?

[George Eustice]

I, too, add the best wishes of Government Members to you on your birthday, Mr Speaker. I understand that it is also the birthday of the House of Commons Chaplain, Rose. I am sure we will all want to add our best wishes to her, too.

I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Lady. This Government have got more people back into work than ever before, and the best way to tackle poverty is to help people off benefits and get them into work. In the LCFS, which has been running for many years, we have an established measure of how much the lowest-income households are spending on food. It is a consistent measure and we are able to benchmark changes year on year. As I said, that has been very stable: it was 16% when the Labour party was in power and it is 16% now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

I read it from cover to cover on the day it came out, as is appropriate for a Minister in serving the needs of the House. I can honestly say that our intention is to bring environmental legislation into law on the day that we leave the European Union. As a consequence, we see no need for any future legislation at this stage.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Andrea Leadsom)]

I would like to place on record my sincere thanks for the commitment and hard work of the military, Environment Agency staff, local councils, volunteers and the emergency services during last weekend’s tidal surge. While a small number of properties were flooded, more than half a million homes and businesses were protected from flooding along the east coast as a result of their efforts. I am sure the whole House would like to join me in expressing our gratitude.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The consumer prices index is at the highest it has been for over two and half years, largely driven by rising food prices. Since the Government stubbornly refuse to measure and act on levels of food poverty, what will the Secretary of State do for the millions of people her Government have ignored for years now who cannot afford to eat?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Food prices are steady and have been reducing. There is a very recent small uptick, but generally food inflation has been low. As the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), explained to the hon. Lady earlier, we do monitor the levels of expenditure on food very closely.

Household Food Insecurity

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered household food insecurity measurement in the UK.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. Back in 2014, I said in this House:

“People are going hungry, and, with each passing day of this terrible excuse for a Government, more and more are falling into poverty, with little or no chance of escape. There are no second chances in Britain today. Food poverty is a clear consequence of the Government’s ideological assault on the social safety net and the people who rely on it. One hungry person is a complete disgrace, but thousands of hungry people are a national disaster.”—[Official Report, 12 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 1500.]

That was one of many speeches I have made in this House about hunger and food poverty, and I have to say that I am getting increasingly fed up with the Government’s inaction. It is estimated that 8.4 million people in Britain now live in households affected by food insecurity, which means that millions of people in Britain—one of the wealthiest countries in the world—are hungry and malnourished.

The Government need to measure and to begin to tackle household food insecurity. Such action is long overdue. Food-insecure households lack reliable access to a sufficient quantity of food, yet there has been no national measurement of household food insecurity in the UK for more than 10 years.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Is she aware that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, of which she is a former member, is currently conducting an inquiry into food waste? It is concentrating not on household waste but on food waste that is discarded by the producer because it does not fit the requirements of either the retailer or the processor. Does she agree that such food waste could help those who are suffering from food poverty?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I am aware of the EFRA Committee’s inquiry, and it would be good for the Government to back the Food Waste (Reduction) Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

Although we have national statistics on how much households have spent on food and on individuals’ dietary intake, those data cannot tell us exactly how many households in the UK are unable to feed themselves adequately.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing such a vital debate. Does she agree that the rate of the problem is not constant throughout the year: there are peaks and troughs? Some families struggle in the run-up to Christmas and during school holidays because their children do not go to breakfast clubs or receive free school meals. If there is no additional support from the Government, the issue of holiday hunger will become more prevalent. Parents have to find the money for an additional 10 meals per week per child to ensure that their children are not malnourished.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend is correct: holiday hunger is a scourge on this country. In a former life, I was a child protection social worker, and families used to say to me that school time was the only time their children could be guaranteed a healthy meal. They dreaded holidays. My colleagues and I often had to do shops for those families to feed them.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. She started off by giving the Government a very hard time. I am not a spokesman for the Conservatives but, in 1996—20 years ago—the United Nations decided that it would eradicate food insecurity. What has it done since then?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Unfortunately, I am not here to speak on behalf of the United Nations, but all the statistics show that the situation has got worse in the United Kingdom since 2010. Prior to that, we had the odd soup kitchen, and food banks were unheard of. Now, we can hear people in every street in every constituency talking about food banks and people who are going hungry.

Food insecurity has a terrible impact on households. Parents are unable to afford to feed their children nutritionally balanced meals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) said, which breeds a sense of shame, stress, anxiety and social isolation. Severely food-insecure adults and children go whole days without eating in this day and age, simply because they lack money. People are living on the bread line—in fact, many are living below it. Recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that people are going from just being hungry—as if that was not bad enough—to living in destitution. They lack clothing, toiletries and heating, and for many homelessness is becoming a reality.

Recently, a woman called my constituency office in desperate need of help after having problems with her benefits. She had no money for gas or electricity, and no food to feed herself and her four young children, all of whom are under 10 years of age. She was alone and unable to leave her home to get to the nearest food bank, which in any case was closed. Even if she had been able to leave her home, she did not have the necessary funds for public transport. In the end, my staff contacted one of the many food bank volunteers in Shields and managed to get food delivered to her and her children. If they had not been able to pick up and deliver that food, that family would have endured the further pain of starvation.

That is one of the everyday experiences that are being documented in food banks, GP offices, classrooms and charities across the country. I am sure that all my colleagues hear similar stories day in and day out from their constituents. When the all-party group on hunger, of which I am a member, travelled the country in 2014, we found that the overriding reason why people visited food banks was the Government’s punitive welfare regime and incessant use of sanctions. The recent debacle with Concentrix shows that the Government’s response to those who are most in need has not changed: they are simply not bothered about them.

All those personal tragedies point to a permanent scarring of life chances. Demonstrable links can be found between food insecurity and educational performance. Children’s intellectual and physical development is damaged by each episode of food insecurity that they experience. The physical and mental health impacts of food insecurity affect the entire economy. Evidence from Canada suggests that the healthcare costs of people who have experienced episodes of severe food insecurity are 121% higher. For those reasons, there is growing consensus among not only Members of Parliament but academics and civil society organisations that the Government should initiate a programme of regular and robust monitoring of food insecurity prevalence so that we can establish precisely the magnitude of the problem, identify which groups are at the greatest risk and properly target resources at prevention.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. This is a very important issue. She is right to say that the Government have a responsibility to count the numbers so we can have a strategic response. In the meantime, we have to recognise the wonderful work that food banks do—she mentioned her own, and Slough food bank is brilliant—to plug the gap. Civil society is doing its best; it is time for the Government to step up, too.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I could not agree more.

[Ruth Smeeth]

An extraordinary feature of the debate is that other countries, which we consider allies, already view this as a state responsibility. In the United States, for example, to tackle holiday hunger, there is a federal programme, which has been federally funded—there has been no research—for more than 50 years. That is part of the country’s normal engagement. Feeding one’s citizens is definitely regarded as a Government responsibility. Does my hon. Friend agree that our Government need to open their eyes and look at things in the round, because not only people on benefits, but the working poor are struggling to feed their families?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I agree. The very least that any Government can do is to ensure that people in their country are fed and cared for when other parts of the state have let them down.

Our best estimates suggest that 500,000 different people received food assistance from the Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest network of emergency food aid providers, in 2014-15. However, many, indeed most food-insecure people choose not to access emergency food aid, and not all food banks are Trussell Trust ones. New preliminary data from Gallup World Poll suggest that 8.4 million people—17 times the number accessing Trussell Trust aid—lived in food-insecure households in 2014. Those data were gathered through the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation food insecurity experience scale, which is an internationally validated tool for measurement of household food insecurity. It showed that we ranked in the bottom half of European countries for protecting our population from food insecurity and hunger.

Unfortunately, the survey through which those data were collected had a national sample of only 1,000 households and did not collect detailed information on respondents’ characteristics. We therefore do not know who is worst affected. What is more, the FAO does not intend to fund that survey beyond 2016. Instead, it will encourage states to produce national measures in their own routine national surveys. That includes us. If we did so, we would be able to track our progress on implementing the global sustainable development goals—to which the UK has said it is committed—intended to end hunger and ensure universal access to safe, nutritious food by 2030.

On 29 November, the Office for National Statistics was due to launch a consultation to establish what metrics should be incorporated into national statistics to track our progress on the goals. The consultation has now been delayed indefinitely. We should, however, move forward swiftly and decisively with such vital monitoring. It would put us in step with other nations, such as the USA and Canada, which regularly monitor prevalence rates, with the data collected playing a game-changing role in creating effective prevention strategies.

[Ruth Smeeth]

We heard an extraordinary story about food poverty in the run-up to this year’s Olympics in Brazil, which has made access to food a human right and, therefore, has provided access to food not only for children and the most vulnerable, but for everyone—from the poorest to the wealthiest. It has done so from an economic position that is nowhere near as positive as our own.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Our country is lagging behind. Our response to the crisis is embarrassing, and things have never been more pressing. Only last week we heard that the number of hospital beds in England alone taken up by patients being treated for malnutrition almost trebled over 10 years. Malnutrition is a complex condition, but food insecurity adds a significant risk. The prevalence of both may well increase if left unchecked in the coming years.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. The experience of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Autism Act 2009, for example, is that the core initiative is to ensure an obligation on the state, or parts of the state, to know the numbers and to identify the needs. Essentially, that is what she is calling for in this debate. That has to happen not only at a UK level, but at regional and local level because, in relation to holiday hunger, school holidays vary in length in different parts of the UK.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Later in my speech I will outline to the Minister how easy it is to introduce such a measure and how little it would cost.

The drop in the value of sterling as a result of Brexit uncertainties means that food prices will start to rise—by between 5% and 8% in the coming year, according to the Food and Drink Federation—and that will place even further pressure on households struggling to put food on the table. On average, healthier food costs two and a half times as much as food high in fat, salt and sugar, and people who experience food insecurity often cut back first on healthy, perishable and more expensive fruit and vegetables.

Proposals for measurement have received a considerable amount of support in the UK. In January 2015, my colleagues and I on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recommended that the Government should collect statistically robust data on the scale of household food insecurity. The APPG on hunger has recommended measuring and monitoring food insecurity. The Administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are starting work on the development of metrics for each of the devolved nations. A UK-wide picture of the nature of food insecurity, however, could not be formed without applying a standard measurement tool in all four nations.

Securing a commitment to measurement from the Government has, however, proved immensely difficult. That is despite the interventions of the APPG and of the EFRA Committee, debates and questions in the House, and the work of organisations such as the Food Foundation, Sustain and Oxfam, which have consistently brought the data gap to the attention of officials in a variety of Departments.

The data gap could easily be closed through inserting a short list of questions into an existing annual survey instrument, such as the living costs and food survey or the national health surveys. The marginal cost is estimated to be between £50,000 and £75,000 per year. Surely it is worth the Government investing that small sum to address one of the biggest scandals of our time.

The UN food insecurity experience scale, and the United States Department of Agriculture’s household food security module from which it was adapted, have been rigorously designed and tested to measure the inability of households to access food. One of those tools could be inserted seamlessly into a UK research programme. Each of the international scales involves asking respondents a series of questions about their ability to access sufficient quality and quantity of food over the preceding 12 months.

I therefore urge this House to move towards annual measurement of food insecurity using an internationally recognised survey tool, beginning in 2017. The Government cannot continue to bury their heads in the sand when this is one of the biggest scandals of the past six years. They should be ashamed that hunger has grown on their watch and they should be doing all they can to stop such a grotesque blight on our society.

We are at grave risk of accepting food poverty and inequality as a normal part of society. Due to Government inaction and erosion of the welfare state, the safety net that once existed, which used to aid people who fell through it through no fault of their own when they fell on difficult times, has been stripped away. The gap is being filled by a range of charities and faith groups, and it should embarrass and shame the Minister and all his colleagues that they have sat back and allowed others to deal with this heart-breaking disaster of, at times, their very own creation.

Is that not the crux of the matter? In truth, the longer the Government refuse to measure the problem, the longer they do not have to acknowledge the scale of it and the longer they do not have to do anything about it. That is a huge dereliction of duty. They are more than happy to allow charities and the likes of the Trussell Trust to do their job for them, which is to care for children, families and vulnerable individuals who are not able to meet the most basic human requirement to feed themselves. It is telling that, when the Trussell Trust first published its shocking statistics about the scale of the problem, some on the Government Benches denounced those figures as distorted, rather than focusing on the shocking fact that food banks exist on such a scale at all.

As I speak, in my constituency, there will be a mother wondering how she is going to feed herself and her toddler today, schoolchildren struggling to focus because their stomachs are rumbling, parents who yet again skipped breakfast to ensure that their children did not have to, families searching their cupboards for what is left and elderly people who are unable to access fresh food. But that is not just the case in my constituency; it is the situation in constituencies and homes across the UK. It really is time that this Government got a grip on this problem. They must start by collating the data that they need to address it. As I have outlined, implementing measurement is not an insurmountable or costly challenge, and this Government owe it to every man, woman and child who woke up hungry this morning and will go to bed hungry tonight, in one of the richest countries in the world, to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. He will be aware that the Department for Education launched the school food plan two or three years ago. Hardwired into that, as well as giving schools quite specific criteria about the type of healthy and nutritious food they should have as part of their school meals, was the idea that all schoolchildren should visit a farm, so that they can see how their food is produced and understand the connection with that food production. There was also the idea that primary school children should be taught to prepare a basic food dish, so that they get used to managing and handling food. That means that they know where their food comes from and how to handle it. I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is an important point.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has recently consulted on all of its statistical surveys. For each Office for National Statistics survey, including the living costs and food survey, there is a steering group that also includes representation from the devolved Administrations.

As we all know, the best route out of poverty is to have a job or to find employment. It is important to note that employment is now at a record high, at more than 74.5%, and that the number of people in work has actually gone up by 461,000 this year, to record levels. I recognise that in many constituencies, including my own, the issue is not so much worklessness as low pay. That is why the Government are increasing the national living wage to £7.50 from April 2017—and we have made clear that we intend to increase it further. We need to tackle low income, and we have outlined our plans to do so.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Will the Government actually check and enforce that the national living wage is being paid? Their record on that is woeful; a lot of places do not pay the national living wage and the Government are just not interested.

[George Eustice]

It is not a DEFRA role to enforce that particular area, but I am sure that the Low Pay Commission and other parts of Government will look seriously at the points the hon. Lady raises. Payment of the national living wage is a legal requirement, and it is enforced.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady is right that it is not that at the same rate as the national living wage, but we have made great progress in recent years in tackling youth unemployment and helping people to get their first job in life. I actually think there is a distinction between those over the age of 25, who have been in work for some time, and those who may be trying their first job.

Not everybody is in work, and it is often said that late benefit payments or sanctions are a contributing factor in increased food bank use. It is worth noting that even the Trussell Trust’s report suggested that, based on its assessments, sanctions accounted for about 5% to 10% of the increased use of food banks. They do not account for all of it on their own.

When it comes to late payments, 90% of jobseeker’s allowance claims are now paid on time and within the 10-day limit, while nearly 89% of employment and support allowance claims are also paid within that timeframe, which is considerably better than in 2009-10. Indeed, the timeliness of payments has improved by about 23%. The Government have also responded to concerns over occasions when people have their payments delayed by introducing short-term benefit advances. Those are now being quite actively publicised in jobcentres, and they can be paid to people the very next day.

It is important to note that the use of sanctions has fallen sharply. Indeed, they are down by half for both JSA and ESA claimants in the year to March 2016. The Government have introduced the concept of mandatory considerations on sanctions so that we can deal with disputes more quickly. The truth is that we need some kind of sanctions in the benefit system for it to be fair and equitable. Staff at my local jobcentre are clear that they use sanctions as only a last resort. Even when they believe sanctions are justified, they have to be cleared by somebody up the line completely unconnected to the case in question. Often, the recommendation that there should be a sanction is not upheld. Huge progress has been made on sanctions. We have responded to some of the points that people have made, and, as I said, their use has halved in recent years.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I am listening carefully to what the Minister is saying about sanctions. The head of the National Audit Office recently said that

“there is more to do in…reducing them further”.

Does the Minister disagree?

[George Eustice]

I have not seen that particular report, but I make the point to the hon. Lady that the number of sanctions halving in one year is, I believe, a dramatic change to what has gone previously. As I said, I believe that having some sort of sanctions is crucial if we are to have a fair benefits system. We cannot have a fair system if there is no kind of penalty or sanctions for those who do not abide by their obligation to seek work.

A number of hon. Members mentioned food waste, which is an important issue. There is always going to be some surplus food in any food chain. We have the Waste and Resources Action Programme and the Courtauld commitments, which aim to reduce food waste. WRAP’s research from 2015 showed that 47,000 tonnes of food—the equivalent of 90 million meals—was redistributed to help feed people. In the hierarchy of recycling, making sure that food does not go to waste in the first place, and is used to feed people, is our key aim. I commend and applaud the great work that organisations such as FareShare and FoodCycle do to help unwanted food from places such as supermarkets go towards helping local communities.

We have had an interesting debate, and again I commend the food banks in our constituencies for all their good work. We have a lot of statistical measures of poverty, and when it comes to the affordability of food, the long-standing metric of household expenditure on food is the most reliable and consistent indicator we have. I am therefore not persuaded at the moment that we need an additional set of questions along the lines that hon. Members have outlined. I take issue with those who say that we have ignored some of these issues. Indeed, huge progress has been made on sanctions, getting people into work, raising wage levels and ensuring that good food is recycled to those who need it.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. It is always good to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), who spoke from the Front Bench today.

It is no surprise that the Minister disagrees with my analysis, but would it not have made a nice, refreshing change if he and his Government had held their hands up and admitted that their experiment with the welfare state has left an enduring and growing scar on this country? Food banks moving on to helping people with housing and all the other issues that have been referred to is yet another example of agencies and charities filling a gap left by his Government. They should not be doing that work—those are the basic tenets of government.

The nub of the debate is not food prices, as the Minister said. It is the fact that his Government’s policies have led to hunger and poverty on a massive scale and that they are refusing to measure it, despite there having been no national measurement for 10 years. He referred briefly to benefit sanctions and said he was not aware of the NAO report I mentioned. To be clear, 400,000 sanctions were imposed last year, despite there being limited evidence of their being justified, leading to “hardship, hunger and depression”. I suggest he goes and reads that report carefully.

[George Eustice]

It may be that we should exchange notes after the debate, but in the year to March 2016, there were 219,000 JSA sanctions, which was down from 497,000 in the same period in the previous year.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The figures I am quoting are from November this year, when the report came out, so perhaps we should share notes.

It is a real shame that the Minister is out of step with everybody else on this. He is out of step with the cross-party APPG, the cross-party Select Committee, the Food Foundation, Sustain and Oxfam, which have all worked tirelessly on this issue. It is a real shame that he has not got the guts to press his Government to introduce a national measurement of household food insecurity. It would cost only up to £75,000 a year. That is considerably less than his annual salary and a little less than the salaries of most people in this House. I will not detain the House any longer, because I am getting angry, and I am upset.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered household food insecurity measurement in the UK.