My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness Miller for instigating this debate, and congratulate her on her timing.

There can have been no more topical time to discuss this given the establishment of the Alliance of Food Security and Nutrition by the G8 this last weekend, and the build up to the Rio plus 20 conference.

There can be few more profound issues for this or any other Parliament to grapple with. And this debate has demonstrated the merits of having a house of expertise and experience to address such a complex issue.

As we have heard there is an interplay of issues such as: Food production Food distribution, Sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services

 Population change Energy supply Water supply And of course, climate change, so authoritatively discussed by my Noble friend Lord Giddens and the noble Lord Stern; who asked a key question on the Government's failure to meet the 2009 G8 commitments, point then reinforced by my noble friend Lord Judd

As has been clear from this debate, my Lords, it is against the backdrop of the Foresight Report by the Governments Chief Scientific Adviser Prof Sir John Beddington, that was commissioned by the then Secretary of State Hilary Benn MP.

It is worth reading out the opening words to Sir Johns report:

The case for urgent action in the global food system is now compelling. We are at a unique moment in history as diverse factors converge to affect the demand, production and distribution of food over the next 20 to 40 years. The needs of a growing world population will need to be satisfied as critical resources such as water, energy and land become increasingly scarce. The food system must become sustainable, whilst adapting to climate change and substantially contributing to climate change mitigation. There is also a need to redouble efforts to address hunger, which continues to affect so many. Deciding how to balance the competing pressures and demands on the global food system is a major task facing policy makers.

There is no better summary of the challenge we have been seeking to address in this two and a half hour debate.

And to demonstrate the scale of the challenge it is worth reminding ourselves of some of the statistics.

A world population of 7 billion rising to 9 billion by 2050. Currently around one billion go hungry every day. Demand for water will increase by 30% by 2030. The amount of arable land per head has almost halved since 1960. Agriculture accounts for up to 30% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Consumers in rich countries waste as much as a quarter of the food they buy. In more than half of industrialized countries, 50% or more of the population is overweight. 40% of the US corn crop ends up in gas tanks instead of stomachs.
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The Noble Baroness Sharp reminded us of the fragility of political norms if we ignore this potential perfect storm.

So this is a crucial subject for ongoing debate in your Lordships house, and I would ask the noble Lord the minister to use his influence on the business manager to see if they would consider an annual debate with more time, as requested by the noble Earl Caithness, on this most fundamental of subjects.

My Lords it is not possible to completely do justice to this in the time available and so I will focus on just three of four points.

The first is the great twenty-first century food challenge - how to produce more food sustainably - the issue addressed so well by the noble Earl Selborne.

As my honourable friend the shadow Secretary of State for Defra, Mary Creagh, said at the Oxford Farming conference this year:

We cannot have food security without sustainability. Its not either produce more or produce sustainably. Its both.

In Government my Rt Hon friend Hilary Benn published Food 2030 to set the Governments vision for food policy over the following twenty years. I dont know whether the noble Lord the minister has read it. I hope so, but I would also ask him whether the Government endorses it and if not could they not produce their own vision to attempt to draw some of these themes together.

We hear about sustainable intensification but we need some flesh on the bones of the soundbite.
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The Government needs to give certainty for farmers and businesses wanting to investment in renewable energy such as solar and Anaerobic Digestion. And like Baroness Parminter I would like more action on separation of food waste by catering outlets and others.

We need a comprehensive approach to carbon reduction across agriculture and food manufacturing.

And the food that is produced needs to be affordable. So we need to harness the power of research and development to ensure that food remains widely available and that publicly funded research is publicly available to all who need it.

And I should say that I agree very much with what the noble Baroness Miller said on GM, and would say to her noble friend
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Lord Taverne and to the Noble Lord Curry that Labour supports the publicly funded GM trials being undertaken at the Rothamstead Research Institute, and I hope they are properly protected from damage.

Which brings me to my second point about tackling food poverty

We are, sadly, familiar with the images of people struggling to avoid starvation in Somalia, Kenya, or the Sahel region of Africa. We know the global pressures that we face in competing for food and water supplies. In the recent past, no one in this country worried about food prices, or food security.

But now we also need to be alive to the challenge of food poverty here at home. Last year food prices in UK rose 6%, more than any other EU country except Hungary.
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When Ed Miliband first used the phrase the squeezed middle to describe families feeling the effect of rising food prices, energy bills, pay freezes and job losses there was scorn from the media. Yet that phrase has now entered the English language.

The consumer price index estimates that we spend 12% of our income on food. But Job Seekers Allowance for a single adult is 71. If the noble Earl Caithness is right that poor people spend an average 15% on food that is 10.65 per week. The Noble Baroness Jenkin talked about living on 1 a day, but I challenge the rest of us to spend 7 a week on food and to eat healthily and well. It is simply impossible.

Which is why we are seeing the rise of food banks and fareshare schemes mentioned by the Rt Rev Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.

The third point I will make is to ask the minister the Jamie Oliver question.

If we are serious about changing cultures so that we eat more healthily and more sustainably surely we need to start in schools. Why are we letting academies off the hook on the school nutritional standards. Bringing that in was one of the most important things I did in government and it is scandalous to see that being eroded away as all secondary school become academies. Turkey Twizzler 2 is just around the corner.

Finally, I want to talk about the threats from commodity speculation facing the global food supply chain
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We need a fair market for food. That starts with international action to tackle the commoditisation of food. Increased volatility in commodity prices makes it difficult for UK farm businesses to plan.

World commodity prices have risen steadily over the last decade and some economists and hedge fund managers are now concerned about the impact this could have on the global cost of food and other commodities.

10 years ago, less than $300 million of non-commercial money was invested in commodity markets. In one decade that has risen 1000 times, to over $300 billion of financial investment today, more than the entire value of the market 10 years ago.

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There is a vicious circle where commercial producers and purchasers pay more to hedge and needed to hedge more as financial speculation has increased market volatility!

The problem is not commercial hedgers, the food producers, but excess speculation caused by Wall Street selling their latest financial products and that in turn raises food prices.

The UK government has recognised impact of world commodity prices, exchange rates and oil prices on food prices. But it failed to support French moves for greater transparency during the French presidency of the G20 so the US has acted unilaterally.

My Lords, the answer to many of these multi-layered global problems is global co-operation and global leadership. This

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was one of the points made by the Rt Rev Prelate the Bishop of Derby.

Whilst, as the noble Lord Gardiner reminded us, this isn't just down to Governments, they have a key role. So my final question is to ask the noble Lord the minister, whether the Prime Minister will find time between Fruit Ninja and football photo opportunities to show the kind of leadership we saw when the last Government made Africa and climate change their priorities for their presidency of the G8, the the leadership Gordon Brown showed in April 2008 to form the G20 to mitigate the worst of the global financial collapse.

My Lords I hope we will keep returning to this subject and I look forward to what the minister now has to say.

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