Food & The Nation - Mary Creagh

Mary Creagh: Britain should be ready to serve up fresh taste of success

Yorkhsire Post

Published on the 15 July 

Up until the 1980s, Britain’s cooking was infamous. Our overcooked meat and vegetables, bland dishes and uninspiring restaurants were mocked by food and restaurant critics the world over. 

Today, tourists are astonished when they come and taste some the best food in the world.
On my visit to the Great Yorkshire Show last week I saw some of the best of our farming heritage and our regional specialist food economy. Yorkshire and the Humber has the largest concentration of food and drink businesses in the UK, which contributes £1.7bn a year to the UK economy.

In Wakefield, we have our famous rhubarb and liquorice festivals, award-winning sausages from Blacker Hall Farm, and fantastic beer from Ossett and Clark’s breweries. Innovative young chefs, like Liam Duffy and his Iris restaurant, are using their talents to bring great cooking to Yorkshire.
These small craft businesses are providing jobs and growth in a semi-rural area, working alongside a supportive local council who understands the role food can play in driving tourism and creating a sense of place.

Food will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century. The world will need to feed eight billion people by 2025. Emerging demand in new markets, lack of access to land and water, and the changing weather, are putting pressure on the global food system. A rising population, climate change and water stress will affect how this country produces its food.
There are huge pressures on the UK’s food system. This year’s late and exceptionally cold spring, and last year’s wet and erratic seasons, mean times continue to be tough, particularly for livestock farmer struggling with the rising cost of grain. Life is getting harder for many families too. Food prices are rising faster than wages and there is a cost of living crisis. The recent horsemeat scandal sparked a debate about how Britain’s food is produced, traced and regulated.

In spite of the challenges, the food industry has the potential to create jobs, boost UK growth and drive the economy. Labour believes that there are opportunities to boost our food security, produce more food in the UK and create new markets to export the best of British produce.

The more we produce in the UK, the less we need to import, the more we are protected from currency fluctuations, and the more we can export.

The food and farming sector is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK: 400,000 people work in food processing and manufacturing in the UK, and exports amount to £11bn.
Currently, Britain imports 40 per cent of our food. Labour believes there are opportunities to boost our domestic food security, produce more food in the UK and to boost our exports to new emerging markets. This is an ambitious approach.

 I believe that we can produce more food as a nation while addressing the decline in biodiversity that we have seen over the last 60 years. But it will require government leadership and a clear strategy.

That is why, last week, I launched Labour’s review of Britain’s food supply and the challenges that face our food system. You can read our document – Feeding the Nation: creating a resilient, growing food industry – online at www.YourBritain.org.uk.

Groups like the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and National Farmers Union (NFU) are calling on retailers to support local farmers. The CPRE have urged supermarkets to stock more local produce, with at least 10 per cent of sales coming from goods produced within 30 miles of a store. 

I would like to see schools, hospitals and central and local government procuring more food to British standards. These are the ideas we are looking at in Feeding the Nation, to help boost our food industry, create jobs and spend public money better.

The free market, de-regulatory approach of the current coalition Government is letting us down. 

Labour in government published Food 2030, the first national food strategy since the Second World War, setting out a vision for a sustainable and secure food supply in the UK. That work has been ignored by the coalition. We set up a Cabinet sub-committee to bring together the relevant government departments involved in food.

The coalition Government scrapped it. There is no food strategy for England and no co-ordination of food policy across government. After the 2010 election, the Government split up the labelling responsibilities of the Food Standards Agency creating a fragmented approach to food governance. That split was criticised by Professor Pat Troop in her review of the handling of the horsemeat scandal.

There are huge opportunities for Britain to lead the world on food. We have some of the world’s best universities and research centres on agriculture, food and environmental sciences. We need to find practical applications for this research and translate it into commercial and business opportunities.

We want a growing food 
industry, pride in our culinary craft and farming traditions, and more great food.

Badger Cull Debate

County Standard supporters like the rural communities we live in, have varying views on the proposed Government badger cull. 

The majority view is that Bovine TB is having a devastating impact of British farming and therefore, if a cull would work it should be supported. However there is little evidence to show that geographically small pilot culls, would have anything but the most marginal, short term results on the impact on Bovine TB.

We certainly don't agree that DEFRA should be using the #TBFree hash-tag on its tweets, when their own evidence shows that at most it will reduce TB in the short term by 16%.

Country Standard also questions the wisdom of a plan that if unsuccessful, the public will end up blaming not the Government but farmers for, thus alienating consumers, just when British farming is recovering from the horsemeat scandal (again nothing to do with farmers) and when it needs all the friends and supporters it can.

 

Country Standard

 

Mary Creagh MP gives her view in today's Western Morning News 

Labour's Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh MP says the badger cull is the wrong choice

Bovine TB is a terrible disease that has cost farmers in Devon and Cornwall dear. Labour wants it brought under control, but the badger cull is not the solution. In 2012, 28,000 cattle were slaughtered, costing us £90 million in testing and compensation. This is a massive animal disease challenge. The pressure it puts on farmers and their families is chronic, intense and costly, both financially and emotionally.

1. 
   The ‘Welcome to Gloucestershire’ sign which appeared on the A40 near Cheltenham ahead of the planned badger cull to reduce bovine tuberculosis

A cull will be bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife. The Government's own analysis is that it will cost more than it saves, put a huge strain on police and will spread bovine TB in the short-term as badgers are disrupted by the shooting. The taxpayer-funded policing costs are £4 million for just the two cull areas. 

The Environment Secretary is talking about licensing another ten zones next year, if the pilots are successful, with another ten zones for each of the three years after that. Some of these zones may be in Devon or Cornwall. Each cull zone carries a £2 million policing bill, but Defra has not said who will pay.

The Government's determination to push ahead with a pilot cull in Gloucestershire and Somerset ignores the scientific evidence. That is why I have tabled an Opposition Day debate in Parliament today to give MPs an opportunity to vote on the issue. 

When the cull was last debated in Parliament in October last year there was a clear majority against the policy. Twenty five coalition MPs voted against the cull, including four Liberal Democrats in the South West, Annette Brooke, Adrian Sanders, Martin Horwood and Stephen Williams. Today, we need more government MPs to speak out for the science and vote to oppose the cull.

In October last year, an extraordinary coalition of leading scientists spoke out against the Government's plans for a badger cull. The eminent group stated: "As scientists with expertise in managing wildlife and wildlife diseases, we believe the complexities of TB transmission mean licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it." Lord Krebs, the eminent Oxford scientist who instigated Labour's badger cull trials, described the cull as "mindless."

In Government, Labour set up the randomised badger culling trial (RBCT) to examine whether culling could make an effective contribution to reducing bovine TB. The study lasted 10 years and cost £50 million, it concluded: "The reductions in cattle TB incidence achieved by repeated badger culling were not sustained in the long term after culling ended and did not offset the financial costs of culling. These results … suggest that badger culling is unlikely to contribute effectively to the control of cattle TB in Britain."

Labour's approach in government was led by that science. We continue to be led by the science. In Government, Labour supported the development of a badger vaccine. Yet the Tory-led government cancelled five of the six badger vaccine trials and continues to cut the research budget for bovine TB. In answer to a Parliamentary Question the Farming Minister admitted that Defra had slashed investment for developing a badger vaccine from £3.2 million in 2009/10 to just £300,000 in 2015/16.

To bring this disease under control, we need a science-led policy with stricter management of cattle movements and to prioritise badger and cattle vaccination to tackle bovine TB. We should be building alliances in the EU to get restrictions on vaccinating cattle lifted.

There is a growing public consensus that the cull is wrong. The Tories and Liberal Democrats are split on the issue and know how strongly the public oppose the cull. The votes of MPs in Devon and Cornwall are needed to stop this cull. I hope they will vote for Labour's motion today. 

The Government should stop, listen to the scientists, listen to the evidence and abandon the cull. Bovine TB is a terrible disease that must be stopped. This cull is not the way to do it.

Tory Government - Raw Deal For Rural Communities - By Mary Creagh

Rural heartland -
feeling full force of ministers' mistakes

Mary Creagh Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, on the raw deal being served to rural communities by the Government.

Western Morning News, Saturday 28 July 2012

The recent dairy crisis has shown that markets alone do not guarantee a fair deal for farmers or the countryside. We are now in the longest recession for 50 years with rural communities paying a high price for the failures of this out-of-touch Government. Defra ministers talk a good game on food security, yet as the dairy crisis loomed, ministers were asleep on the job.

The race to the bottom on farm-gate prices is bad for farmers and, ultimately, bad for consumers. We need an end to one-sided contracts and the reckless behaviour of the big milk processors who are squeezing dairy farmers for all they can. Last week the Government woke up to the scale of the problem and started to bang heads together. But why did it take a milk blockade for ministers to act? Labour wants to see the Government strengthen the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator to ensure a fair deal across the supermarket supply chain with the power to fine companies who breach the code. Yet ministers oppose giving the Adjudicator the power to fine.


There are wider problems in the economy in Devon and Cornwall, and these are tough times for rural communities and businesses. This out-of- touch Government has made the wrong choices on the economy, choking off growth and the fragile recovery. The South West did not receive a penny from the £9.4 billion promised for rail projects by the government earlier this month. Worse still, as the WMN has reported, ministers are looking to cut direct trains from Penzance to Paddington by a third under the new Great Western franchise agreement.

There is a cost of living crisis spreading across our towns and villages. Living costs in rural communities are already 10-20% higher than in urban areas. There has been a massive growth in food poverty as families struggle with higher living costs, lower wages and welfare changes. The leading food charity FareShare estimates that 16% of people within the South West are living in food poverty, unable to feed themselves on regular basis. Earlier this month, the Devon and Cornwall Food Association extended its reach from Plymouth to the whole of Devon, redistributing food to local foodbanks. Yet one of the first things the Tory-led government did was to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales. The board guarantees minimum pay and conditions for 23,500 rural workers in the South West. Axing it will take £9 million a year out of England's rural economy through lost sick and holiday pay alone. The last thing we need is a race to the bottom on wages. This will take money out of the rural High Street, local shops and pubs.

House of Commons Library research, which I commissioned, revealed families in rural areas have been disproportionately hit by the removal of the tax credit second income threshold. This protected the £545 per annum child tax credit family element for households earning less than £40,000 and helped 15% of families with children in rural areas (compared to 10% in urban areas). Rural councils, which tend to have older and less deprived populations receive lower grant allocations, spend less on social care, charge more for home care and allocate lower personal budgets than local authorities serving younger, more urban and more deprived populations. The Commission for Rural Communities reported last month that young people in rural areas face extra barriers finding work and accessing training. The rate at which young people become NEETS (young people not in education employment or training) is rising faster in rural areas than urban ones. Long term youth unemployment has more than trebled in the last year across Devon and Cornwall.

What was the Government's response to the Commission for Rural Communities? They abolished it. In the last two years, Defra ministers have failed to get a grip with the issues facing rural communities. They have cut funding for flood defences by 30% and then asked communities to come up with the cash for flood defences themselves. Their proposals to sell off the nation's forests met huge protests and they backed back down. The same happened with national nature reserves and changes to reduce environmental protection in planning law. And wild animals in circuses. It is not just Cameron and Osborne getting the big decisions wrong, and it is not just people in urban centres who are affected. It is coalition heartlands like the South West who are feeling the force of government incompetence. Rural communities deserve better.

Mary Creagk Slams Tory U-turn on Groceries Code Adjudicator with Power

Tory-led Government out of touch with needs of

farmers and consumers

Creagh and Murray

17 October 2011

Mary Creagh MP, Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, in response to the publication of the Government’s response to the BIS Select Committee report on the proposed Groceries Code Adjudicator, said:

“After 18 months of delay, the Government has announced its Groceries Code Adjudicator will be neutered from the start. It will not investigate the claims of trade associations or whistleblowers and it will not penalise companies who breach the code despite the recommendations of two Parliamentary Select Committees.

“This Government is out of touch with farmers, food processors and consumers alike, when food prices have risen six per cent in one year. They should be standing up for shoppers who are feeling the squeeze and the food producers who are the engine for jobs and growth in this, the country’s largest manufacturing sector.”

Ian Murray MP, Labour’s Shadow Consumer Affairs Minister, added:

“The huge delays to this announcement are unacceptable. I am disappointed that the main recommendations of the BIS Committee are merely being considered, and not yet acted upon, by Ministers. Much of the evidence shows that the system would be more responsive to the needs of supplier and, ultimately, consumers if information from expert trade associations and even whistleblowers could be used to initiate investigations.”

Labour to rebrand as "Party of the Countryside"

Labour to attempt rebrand as 'party of the countryside'

Mary Creagh to tell Labour party conference that government is vulnerable on rural affairs such as forests and planning reform

• Damian Carrington

Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 September 2011 06.30 BST

 
Mary Creagh will tell the Labour conference: 'We want strong rural communities with fair pay at their heart.' Photograph: Graham Franks/Alamy
The Labour party will make an audacious pitch on Tuesday to position itself as the party of the countryside, warning that government plans will see wages cut for adult and child workers in rural areas. The moves follows a turbulent year for the government in the shires, with a U-turn on plans to sell national forests and uproar over a radical overhaul of the planning system.

"We stand up for fairness in the countryside," Mary Creagh, shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs will tell the party's annual conference in Liverpool on Tuesday. "We want strong rural communities with fair pay at their heart."
Evoking the Tolpuddle martyrs' fight for fair farm pay in 1834, Creagh will warn against the government's desire to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, claiming that 42,000 casual workers will see an immediate cut in their pay. The AWB, founded by Labour in 1948, sets minimum wages and conditions for over 150,000 workers in England and Wales.

Its abolition will see the minimum wage of £3.05 for 14- to 16-year-olds go, says Creagh, and weaken protection for permanent workers, whose homes are often tied to their employment.

Creagh, the MP for Halifax, will acknowledge the challenge for a party whose strongholds have traditionally been in urban areas. She will say: "Labour is the party of the countryside. The first time I said that in parliament, the Tories laughed. They're not laughing now."

Creagh will also lay claim to a Labour heritage on countryside issues: "We set up the national parks in 1948. We established the green belt [and] the world's first climate change law."

She will accept that people in rural areas thought Labour had lost touch at the last election, and "voted us out". But Creagh believes the party can find success in rural areas because the issues of greatest concern to people are universal: low incomes, jobs, housing and transport.

As well as forestry and planning, she will highlight where she believes the government is vulnerable: cuts to post offices and rural bus services, delays in rural broadband roll-out, the divisive issue of badger culling and the cost of housing. She will also note the nine council seats won by Labour in the Forest of Dean, after the bungled forestry sell-off proposals.

She will argue that the Conservative party's anti-regulation instincts – Defra is undergoing its "red tape challenge" until 3 October – leave it unable to deliver the environment policies needed, and will remind the conference of the budget cut taken by Defra, the largest cut in Whitehall.

Willie Bain, a shadow Defra minister, also acknowledges a pressing electoral reason to build support in rural areas: "We need to win back seats in the south and east of England if we are to form a future government – it's a must."
A vote on the abolition of the AWB is expected before the end of 2011. "We want to make sure Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs are made to feel very uncomfortable," Creagh told the Guardian on the eve of her speech.

Another quango being abolished is the Commission for Rural Communities – axed, claims Creagh, because the government "doesn't want anyone standing up to them". She also highlighted the closing of a third quango, the Aggregates Sustainability Fund, which required quarrying companies to fund restoration work to the countryside after mineral extraction.

Barry Gardiner MP, a former Defra minister and current member of the Defra select committe, said: "The Labour party is on the side of people who are not getting a fair deal. People who work at the sharp end of society delivering the things we depend on and there's no finer example of that than people who labour in the countryside." He said Labour's pitch would only be audacious if it was aimed at major landowners and agricultural companies.