Reducing hunger in the UK

Hannah Lambie-Mumford  - Research Fellow at SPERI

Yet what is still lacking in all of this analysis and prescription is clarity over the exact nature of the overarching policy problem and the specific ways in which these recommendations would address it.

In its opening paragraphs the Parliamentary inquiry report does acknowledge the lack of precision around the  problem at hand, but it then claims that spending time on better understanding it conceptually ‘would not match the urgency that we feel over a number of our fellow citizens going hungry’.  Whilst a rush to action brought about by this moral imperative is understandable, it must also be realised that, if the policy problem is not clearly articulated, effective policy responses could well be hindered.

How, then, should we frame the problem?  The concept of ‘food poverty’ is the most insightful.  It addresses centrally people’s ability to participate actively in a socially embedded food culture – to shop, cook, eat and socialise through food in the way socially accepted standards of living assume.

Employing such a policy concept has several key benefits.  Firstly, it highlights different layers within these experiences, notably chronic and acute experiences both of which require distinct responses.  Secondly, it enables structural determinants and possible points for policy intervention to be identified.  For example, how much money do people have (which raises the issue of in-work and out-of-work income)?  Can they get to shops selling a good variety of affordably priced healthy food (which is about retail and transport infrastructure)? And can they store and cook their food when they return home (which draws attention to housing adequacy)?

Just as importantly, however, clearer articulations of the policy problem at hand will also facilitate a better understanding of what the problem is not.  A handful of recommendations from the Parliamentary Inquiry make reference to levels of food waste and the role redistribution could play in supplying charitable provision.  Food waste and food poverty are both undeniably symptoms of dysfunctional food and socio-economic systems.  But they are distinct policy problems and should not be conflated.  Certainly, one (waste food) should not be seen as a way to overcome the other (food poverty).

Other recommendations of the Parliamentary Inquiry concerning emergency food provision, and indeed the very title of the Inquiry report itself (‘Feeding Britain’), also imply that the best response to acute experiences lies in further embedding charitable emergency food provision.  Again, although these initiatives are important sites of care and solidarity in local communities, the concept of ‘food poverty’ actually works to highlight the fact that the determinants of acute experiences, and therefore their prevention and alleviation, lie elsewhere: with core questions of adequate income and effective social security.

In sum, both of the major reports published in the last few weeks provide important recommendations for action which would help to address acute and chronic experiences of food poverty, including raising wages and improving the social security system.  They do move the debate forward.  That said, we still need to focus most of all on the large sections of both reports that highlight the need to re-evaluate the adequacy and efficacy of the whole of the UK’s social security system and the wider political-economic structures within which the system is embedded.  At root, it is these structures that influence people’s standards of living and ultimately their ability to feed themselves and their families.