I am delighted to introduce the debate at this time. I wish that my thinking about the issue at the same time as the Food and Agriculture Organisation meeting takes place in Rome were more than a coincidence, but these things sometimes conspire for all the best purposes. At least the presence of Mugabe has given the meeting some added piquancy, although I would like to have thought that the presence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and another friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), would have been enough to generate some interest in it.

Food and food politics are highly contentious issues at the moment. We all know that recent price increases have raised the issue to a new height of awareness, and I wish mainly to talk about the UK scene, although I shall finish by saying a few things about the international scene. I am well aware of what the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), speaks on, and I wish to keep the debate mainly in the domestic context.

It is quite difficult to define food policy, let alone food policy security, but I am clear that we have a problem in this country and in the western world, and I want to highlight some things that we ought to take account of. As always with these debates, I can raise the issues, but I hope that the Minister will respond with some answers about the Government’s thinking.

There is obviously a question from the outset, because it is difficult to identify which Department and which Minister will take responsibility for the issue. My hon. Friend is in the Chamber to answer today, and in the true sense of joined-up government, I hope that he will talk to other Ministers about it, because the Food Standards Agency reports to the Department of Health, the Cabinet Office is spending a great deal of time on the issue of food co-ordination, and other Departments—such as the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Children, Schools and Families—are involved with the issues about what we feed our children in schools. A panoply of Ministries take partial responsibility for the matter.

I am going to cheat and not come up with my own definition of food security, because it has been very well done in the recent Cabinet Office paper, to which I shall give some publicity, because it is very good at trying to settle the old differences and delineate how to take the new strategy forward. The Cabinet Office says:

“The term ‘food security’ is used in different ways but it is essentially a matter of identifying, assessing and managing risks in food supply.”

It continues:

“The multiple dimensions and interpretations of ‘food security’ can hinder any discussion.”

It then looks at the six key criteria by which food security should be measured. They are: availability, which is to do with production, supply and so on; access—to do with affordability and physical accessibility; affordability in its own right—to do with what households can and cannot afford; safety—to do with what we eat and feeling secure in the knowledge that what we eat will not poison us or do long-term damage to our bodies; resilience, as the food chain has to be capable of being protected and supported; and finally, confidence, as there must be public confidence in all those issues, so that people feel that they can purchase the food.

There is so much that I could say in the debate, but I shall keep to the main bones of my contention, whereby I hope that the Government are moving towards a proper food policy based on addressing the current problems of where we get our food from and how it can be supplied at a reasonable price. We all know that people are becoming increasingly aware of the issue globally, but we have seen rising food prices over the past few months in this country. Questions are being asked of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as to how we can perhaps forestall some of the increases or at least put them in the context of how we can make progress. The price rises vary enormously.

I will go on the record about this. I have said it before; it is not something that I mind being reported. I always saw the dangers of a cheap food policy. We became pretty complacent, believing that food prices would always stay low. We were not asking enough questions about where that food was coming from and we certainly never foresaw what might happen on the world stage. We did not foresee what could happen if we suddenly moved away from a cheap food policy and began to realise that that was not ordained from above; it was something that we had to make work and happen. Supply had to be put in place and we had to look at who was demanding it and why.

We have seen prices going up. Bread and cereals are up 8.5 per cent. and milk and cheese are up 15.7 per cent. Those are dramatic increases. I have never been one who takes a cheap food policy for granted, because it has been my belief that suppliers in this country have had something of a raw deal. I could argue as to why they have had a raw deal, but at least now some of those suppliers may begin to get appropriate rewards, which could change our food provision for the better. However, there are other aspects to the issue that are increasingly worrying.

We have seen self-sufficiency decline. It has not declined dramatically, but it has declined, and I think that we need to consider whether there should be a requirement for a minimum proportion of our food to be supplied from within this country, because of the dangers of relying on imports. Also, I feel strongly that this is not just about a national policy but about local food chains, which I very much support.

The other aspect is rising fuel prices. That issue takes two forms. People are paying more to move food around. I am referring to food miles—the Tim Lang phrase that is now in common parlance. More particularly, one of the reasons why food prices are rising is that we have chosen to turn land over to biofuel. I personally think that that is completely explicable and I strongly support it. I know that there is a debate on the issue later in the week—the Minister may respond to it, too—but I am worried by the exaggeration that takes place. Everyone said, “This is a jolly good thing because we are moving away from our dependency on petrol and diesel,” so we move to another product and then there is a huge row. People say, “This is terrible. We should stop it immediately. It is a completely inappropriate use of our land space.” I do not go along with that. I think that there is a role for biofuels. We need to find other ways in which we can move vehicles about but, again, anyone who thinks that that is the answer per se will be sadly disillusioned.

The other aspect of food coming from abroad that worries me, as the Minister will know because I have asked him about it and there have been various DEFRA investigations, is the threat of animal disease. I have felt for a long time that we underestimate that. We could be seen to be obsessed with terrorism. One aspect of that could always be the threat of animal disease being deliberately put into our food supply, but more particularly, we are talking about accidents of fate. This country has had foot and mouth and we are threatened currently by avian influenza and bluetongue. It costs huge amounts of money to deal with such matters. I am proud that the Department has strategies in place and we are working incredibly hard but, again, we ignore those threats at our peril. That issue must be part of how we deal with security and evolve a proper food policy.

One of the criteria must be food safety. Of course, that is linked to animal disease. It involves what we eat and who supplies it. However, there is a more general issue to do with safety. If we take the widest definition of that, we are talking not just about what is safe to eat, but how much people eat. The obesity debate—the obesity epidemic, some people would say—is part and parcel of the debate about where we supply, what we supply and how much we supply.

This issue is topical. The Chancellor wrote to Dr. Andrej Bajuk, the Minister of Finance in the Slovenian Government. He did that because Slovenia will shortly take on the EU presidency; indeed, it has already taken it on because it is 1 June—[Interruption.] It is finishing off its presidency—I thank the Minister for reminding me of that. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit Slovenia, so it is a bit distant to me. However, I congratulate the Chancellor on sending that letter, which at least raised the question of how the common agricultural policy relates to the issues before us.

As a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic, I feel strongly that we are, yet again, not asking the pertinent questions about the common agricultural policy. I know that these recent developments have upset the National Farmers Union because they look as though they will lead to more instability. We must, however, ask whether we have the appropriate policy in place at this time of rising fuel and food prices to provide most of Europe’s food, and I would say that we have not. The Chancellor is therefore to be congratulated on at least opening up a debate on the issue. We have, of course, chosen to subsidise food, and I have no problem with that, but I do have a problem with the way in which we subsidise it in the EU. We need to look carefully at whether there are better policies and mechanisms and at whether those that we do have are appropriate as we go forward in this century. At the very least, the jury is out on that.

Let me put food security in the context of wider food policy. As I said, we do not have a lead Department on the issue in this country, although food is one of the three points of delivery for Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As I said, however, the responsibilities of other Departments abut food policy, and we need some clarity about where food security fits in our wider food policy. I hope that the Minister can at least begin to provide that.

I want to move on to a couple of final points about where we are going in terms of food. We have more choice than we have ever had, although that choice will perhaps become a bit more limited as food prices rise and people eat out less often. However, there are also issues such as obesity and the changing nature of food. Clearly, there is the debate on genetically modified food, and the Government are right to have been incredibly hesitant in their approach to GM, although I would like them to be even more hesitant because I do not agree with GM, which is the wrong way to go. However, GM does not represent the totality of the way in which food is provided. We now live in the era of functional foods, some of which can be incredibly important to people with health-related problems, who can, in effect, eat to overcome those problems. However, I am somewhat worried about other aspects of functional foods and about what is being supplied to whom. Such issues matter in terms of security, because there is only so much food that we can produce.

On the world context, I am not going to second-guess what comes out of the Rome conference. It is important that the conference is seen as a significant staging post in terms of how we look at what food is available. It is extremely good that food supplies have risen more quickly than population. However, there is the problem of climate change, and there have been conflicts in places in Sudan that I know very well, as well as in Bangladesh. Is that a sign of things to come? Much though I am talking about the national need to highlight food security within a wider food policy, the international context must be writ large. If there is a lack of food and an ongoing population increase, the relationship between food supply and demand will increasingly become one of disequilibrium, and that will have a huge impact on us. We have been rather complacent in believing that food will be available to us and that it will be cheap and plentiful, because what happens elsewhere in the world—either in the developed or developing world—has huge ramifications for us.

Will the Minister examine the issues that I have raised? This is part of an ongoing debate and the matter is worthy of further examination in an international context when Ministers and others return from Rome. It is about time that we in this country spelled out what our worries are and the need to highlight food security. As I said throughout the debate, we should say where that fits into the wider food policy debate, which is as close to our basic integrity as human beings as we can get.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on his impeccable timing—he rightly referred to the high-level summit that is taking place in Rome over the next couple of days. We await the summit’s conclusions with anticipation. The Government believe that the international response to the food price situation must be ambitious and comprehensive and that it should address the short-term, long-term and underlying causes. I hope to reflect those things in my speech.

We take food security extremely seriously. The UK enjoys a high level of food security: we have access to enough quality and nutritious food from the UK and from the range of countries with which we trade. In addition, recent CAP reforms mean that European farmers are much better able to respond to market signals. However, there are increasing pressures on land use arising from climate change, the need to feed a growing global population with changing consumption patterns, and competition from other uses such as biofuel production, which my hon. Friend mentioned—his remarks were considered and appropriate.

We are not complacent. The recent increase in food prices has put the spotlight on some of the challenges that we face both in the UK and overseas. High food prices have been caused by a combination of supply and demand factors—some temporary, some structural. For example, poor harvests resulting from bad weather, particularly in Australia, and low stocks account partly for the increases. Other factors include the steep increase in the price of oil, and increased demand from China and other rapidly growing countries. Much of the Chinese population used to have a very basic diet, but now, like us, they seek more luxury items, because they have developed a middle class. We have enjoyed the fruits of that growing economy through cheap goods, but it means—for us and the rest of the world—more pressure on our resources, including food.

We recognise the effect of high global food prices for consumers around the world, but the developing world feels the impact most. As my hon. Friend said, that is important, which is why the Prime Minister wrote to the Japanese Prime Minister, who chaired a G8 food summit on 22 April. We need a coherent and holistic response from the international community. Helping the worst affected is an immediate challenge. Food is becoming increasingly unaffordable for, and inaccessible to, poor households around the world and the humanitarian agencies that provide food aid. Every day, 25,000 children die because they do not have enough to eat.

Food prices are expected to fall from their current peak, but they are likely to remain above recent levels in the medium term, so we need to tackle the underlying causes and long-term challenges of poverty and hunger facing 850 million people on our planet. We agree with the World Bank that there is enough food in the world to meet demand, but there are clearly problems with distribution—there is not enough food in the right place—and affordability.

We must also prepare for the impact of climate change on agricultural markets and the livelihoods of the poor. Any response to the current situation must be environmentally sustainable in the medium and long term. We must not jeopardise the long-term availability of our natural resources or exacerbate the climatic changes that already threaten food production in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations. For example, harmful land use changes, particularly deforestation, contribute to climate change.

Although rising food prices are a global problem, we are conscious that UK consumers have been seriously affected too. However, the increase in commodity prices is already stimulating an increase in agricultural production around the world, which is a good thing. British farming is responding to market signals, resulting in a fall in prices on agricultural futures markets in the expectation of higher volumes. That means that the rate of food price inflation, currently 6.6 per cent., is likely to fall again in the near future. My hon. Friend said that he did not want to upset the National Farmers Union by referring to CAP reform. I have not found that the NFU is upset when we discuss CAP reform. It is always eager to engage in constructive dialogue on the matter.

The latest UK household food expenditure figures—for 2007—show that the impact of the rise in food prices on the amount that households spend on food is still relatively minor compared to the long-term downward trend. The proportion of average household expenditure on food was 9.2 per cent. in 2007. That is still 1.5 percentage points below the level 10 years ago, which was 10.7 per cent. If current commodity prices are maintained throughout 2008, we might expect the proportion of expenditure in 2008 to rise to around 9.5 per cent., the level in 2001.

We recognise that low-income households spend a greater proportion of their household income on food. The lowest quintile spend 15 per cent. We also recognise that rising energy and fuel prices are putting pressure on consumers. My hon. Friend asked where food security and the issue of food sit, and referred to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Food is a cross-Government issue; for example, many Departments have been involved with the year of food and farming.

I was at a farm earlier this week meeting children who were seeing livestock to understand where food comes from. It is pertinent to the global debate about food production and consumption and vital that the generation of our children now in school grow up understanding and valuing food, not just so that they eat healthily—another cross-Government issue—but so that they do not waste food. We waste around £10 billion-worth of food every year. What would my hon. Friend do if he had a phone call from the Chancellor saying, “We’ve stopped wasting all the food and we’ve got £10 billion to spend”? It would all go to Stroud, of course—that is what my hon. Friend would do.

Those are important aspects of the debate. We are engaging actively with consumer representatives to explore what further can be done for low-income consumers, who are particularly affected by increasing food prices. As a Minister, I hosted such a meeting earlier this month. The Government are considering their response to the recent Competition Commission investigation into the groceries market, referred to it by the Office of Fair Trading, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend.

We will continue to investigate allegations of price fixing. The investigation into milk prices found signs of collusion between certain major supermarkets and dairy producers, which led to fines of more than £116 million. We take the matter seriously. In the longer term, we need an open global trading system, and an end to trade-distorting subsidies and export restrictions.

As for reform of the common agricultural policy, we do not want subsidies for food production. We want subsidies or public money being used for the public good. That is why we have seen an increase in the rural development programme for England. That is the future for public subsidy, not production. We are not alone in that view among member states. As a member of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend will be only too well aware that the debate divides member states, but I believe that we are in the ascendancy; the Commission has planted its flag on future reform.

My hon. Friend raised a number of questions. He is concerned about animal disease coming into the country. People bring in food that they should not, and it gets into the waste chain; that is a serious concern, and we are taking action. My hon. Friend mentioned bluetongue and the purchase of vaccinations. There is a model partnership between Government and industry, with a core group making the important decision to purchase the vaccine. It will be done on a voluntary basis, because that is what the industry wants. My hon. Friend said that he wanted to focus on the domestic agenda, but his remarks and mine show only too clearly that in today’s world we cannot operate food security in isolation.

We have an abundance of different types of food. My hon. Friend mentioned local produce and local purchasing. There are more farmers markets, and people are now far more discerning and enjoy a better quality of food. However, in contrast, we are also eating more unhealthily; we have that juxtaposition within society. The Government, through the Department of Health, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and even the Cabinet Office—my hon. Friend mentioned its recent publication—seek to inform, to educate and to promote better food, better consumption and less waste.

Against all that, one thing is clear. Farming and food production matter. We want a flexible, skilled and market-oriented domestic agricultural sector that makes a positive contribution to our environment. Our farming industry has much to be proud of when it comes to the environment. We are now celebrating 21 years of agri-environmental projects. On open farm Sunday last weekend, a farmer showed me that the margins he had created were producing ladybirds that in turn were eating the aphids; as a result, he did not have to use so many pesticides. It is cheaper for him and better for the environment. We want to champion British food. We want the skills and innovation, the investment and branding, and the quality assurance of the farming industry rather than a policy that simply maximises domestic self-sufficiency.