One of the most promising pledges in the Labour manifesto for last year’s general election was to ensure that at least half of all food procured by the UK public sector was either local or produced to what it called “higher environmental standards”. Buying and serving more British food is a powerful lever at the government’s disposal to support our food and farming sector, using the taxpayer’s pound to bolster our farmers’ income while treating users of public services to the best produce in the world.
It was dispiriting then that the government’s new food strategy, published yesterday (15 June), managed to set out a slew of priority outcomes aiming to “create a healthier, more affordable, sustainable, resilient food system” without mentioning the public sector or procurement once.
The strategy argues that Britain’s food system “is not delivering the outcomes we need”, pointing to problems with obesity, dietary risks, environmental sustainability, resilience and food security: all challenges that local and British sourcing can at the very least help to address. It would therefore have been the ideal opportunity to reiterate and recommit to the 50% target for public purchasing, even if there were no concrete steps to announce. Instead, silence.
It would be wrong to accuse the government of doing nothing on British procurement. Just last month, Sarah Champion MP (Lab, Rotherham) kindly wrote to thank us for our help promoting her ‘Buy British Bill’ and outlined some of the steps the government is taking to improve the overall landscape. These include a Cabinet Office consultation on requiring public bodies to take account of the impact of their spending on British jobs and skills, which was launched last month but would only affect contracts with a value of £5 million or more. Nevertheless, the Alliance expects to respond.
More directly on food, in his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference in January, the Defra Secretary, Steve Reed MP, committed to monitoring the origins of food served through the public sector. This is an essential first step because the government cannot show progress towards any target unless it monitors performance; it should publish the data so it can be held to account.
Coincidentally, yesterday Mr Reed also answered a parliamentary question from Rupert Lowe MP (Ind, Great Yarmouth) on “whether he has considered providing fiscal incentives to local authorities that prioritise British food in their catering contracts”. He gave no direct answer but pointed to the new National Procurement Policy Statement published in February. What that statement says falls rather flat:
“The Government expects the highest standards of integrity, ethical conduct and environmental sustainability in business practices from suppliers delivering public contracts. This includes the procurement of food; the Government wants to increase the proportion of food purchased across the public sector that is certified to higher environmental standards and which high-quality producers, including local suppliers, are well placed to meet.”
Technically this contributes to the manifesto pledge which was for more procured food to be local or produced to higher standards, but the government knows very well that it was the commitment to local sourcing that caught the attention. Yes, local producers will absolutely be well-placed to satisfy requirements for higher standards, but farmers and food producers could be forgiven for having expected something more robust than that. Perhaps the outcome of the Cabinet Office’s consultation will see a further update.
The Countryside Alliance has recently conducted a major exercise of submitting Freedom of Information requests to government departments and local authorities asking what policies, if any, they use to support British food procurement and how much of what they have been buying originated in the UK. Our report will be issued soon, but for the time being we can say that while there were some excellent examples of good practice, the majority either had no policy and no data or did not respond at all.
At a time when British farmers, food producers and suppliers face economic uncertainty, owing not least to government decisions such as the Family Farm Tax, they deserve to feel the full weight of the public sector behind them. Farmers’ taxes support public services, and they deserve their support in return.
The Countryside Alliance stands with our food and farming sector in campaigning for rigorous, traceable food procurement policies that will ensure public bodies deliver on the government’s manifesto commitment.