The party manifestos contain some useful, piecemeal policies but we remain as far away from a holistic food strategy as we’ve ever been, says Nick Hughes.
On Monday morning, I found myself re-reading a speech Michael Gove gave to the Oxford Farming Conference in January 2018. Gove was six months into his tenure as Defra secretary of state and with typical rhetorical flair he set out a vision to develop the kind of coherent food policy that had eluded so many of his predecessors.
“It is only, I believe, by looking at food policy in the round, developing an understanding of the economic, social, environmental, health and other issues at every stage in the food chain that we will develop the right coherent strategy for the future,” said Gove, in a passage that could conceivably have been written by a seasoned scholar like professor Tim Lang.
Gove subsequently set in motion the transition to a new system of agricultural subsidies based on the principle of public money for public goods and commissioned his friend, Henry Dimbleby, to join the dots between those interconnected policy issues in a national food strategy.
Following Gove’s speech I wrote that, taken at face value, the vision he presented “represented the greatest shift in food and farming policy since Britain joined the European Economic Community”. But I cautioned there were “a number of persuasive arguments why Gove’s vision will never translate into practice”, including a lack of job security for Defra secretary of states (just 18 months after that speech Gove left Nobel House to become Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in July 2019) and the risk of opposition from the mainstream farming community.
Reflecting on the content from the party manifestos last week, I take no satisfaction in seeing my caution vindicated. For while the Conservative government has indeed delivered a new farm subsidy regime (albeit one that continues to divide opinion), we remain as far away from having a holistic food strategy for the UK as we’ve ever been.
The manifestos contain some decent standalone policies, as well as some questionable ones, but I see no convincing attempt to tackle the issues Gove highlighted in a systemic way.
Dimbleby did a pretty good job of doing just that in his final report, yet three years on barely any of his recommendations have been adopted as government policy and standout commitments from the government’s subsequent food strategyhave not been delivered.
Commitments to develop a land use framework and reform public food procurement have now been punted into the new Conservative manifesto to be delivered – if you are willing to believe it – in the next parliamentary term, alongside several obesity policies that had already been kicked down the road.
Labour has adopted these policies and added a few of its own, but there is nothing in its manifesto to shift the impression that structural reform of the food system is not on Sir Keir Starmer’s immediate agenda. The fact that a ban on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s rates as a headline-grabbing commitment speaks volumes for the vacuum in ambition, given that most supermarkets already do this voluntarily.
It had been trailed in the media that shadow health secretary Wes Streeting had ultra-processed foods in his crosshairs, but there was no mention of UPFs in a Labour manifesto that seemed to be written with the main aim of avoiding Conservative lines of attack.
The innate caution of the two main political parties stood in contrast to the conversations I had at last week’s FootprintAwards where senior sustainability leaders consistently expressed frustration at policy inertia. Progressive businesses have an appetite for intervention on issues such as mandatory health and sustainability reporting, and reform of public procurement; some like Nestlé and Bidfood have publicly called for a comprehensive food strategy via collaborations like the Hope Farm statement. Yet ministers and their shadows seem unable to break free of the tired Westminster mind-set that intervention equals ‘red tape’ which equals bad news for businesses.
Some people I speak to believe that governments are limited in their ability to drive systemic change and that it is consumer demand for healthy, sustainable, quality food that will ultimately shift the dial. I respect that opinion, however outside of the committed ‘foodies’ we connect with through our professional and social networks, I am yet to be convinced there is a mass of citizens prepared to become agents of food systems change through their purchasing habits. For the vast majority, price remains king.
To borrow a car metaphor (since winning the motorist vote seems to be a key priority for both the Conservatives and Labour), governments need to take the wheel and start making healthy, sustainable food the easy choice. Gove identified some of the many levers needed to achieve this in his all too brief stint leading Defra. Yet, in the UK at least, the car remains in the garage awaiting repair and with a driver scared to take it back out onto the road.
