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Climate Change (Political Response)

In supporting the motion, I shall restrict my comments exclusively to the Government’s failure to demonstrate leadership over climate change when it comes to our food market and reducing food miles. The world’s population is set to increase by 50 per cent. over the next 40 years. Demand for food is set to double in that time, yet the Government have presided over a criminal reduction in this country’s food production capacity. That matters, because the Government’s target of an 80 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions—to which we all agreed—looks ludicrous when set against the ever-expanding emissions caused by the transportation of rapidly increasing amounts of food from overseas to our tables. According to the Government’s own figures, since 1997 the proportion of imported meat has increased by two thirds, the proportion of eggs that we have imported has tripled, and the proportion of vegetables that we import has risen by one third. In the last two years alone, the proportion of liquid milk that we import has increased by almost 60 per cent. If we are going to tackle climate change, we must ensure that we produce as much as possible of the food that we eat as close to home as we can. To do that, we have to ensure that we produce more food, not less, with the help of a farming industry that is confident and not fearful about its future. That means that, if we are to reduce carbon emissions, we have to expand our capacity to produce food in the UK. It is one of the easiest things that the Government could do to tackle climate change, and there are thousands of innovative farmers around the country itching to take the lead. The reduction in capacity is happening because the Government will not tackle seriously the power of supermarkets, which place no environmental standards on their procurement policies and will not act to ensure fair trade for our farmers so that they stay in business. As we have heard, the public sector spends about £2 billion a year on food procurement for Government Departments, schools, prisons and hospitals. The NHS is the largest food purchaser in the country, spending nearly a quarter of the total public sector food budget, yet 75 per cent. of the meat and fish used in our hospitals is imported from abroad. Another dreadful consequence of the importation of meat products is the destruction of the rain forest. Every 10 minutes, an area the size of 200 football pitches is chopped down in the Amazon rain forest, all to provide pasture land for cattle or to make way for soy plantations to provide feed for them. We could—and should—produce both in this country, slashing food miles and ensuring the preservation of the crucial carbon sink that is the rain forest.