Purpose, place and the missing plate

This was the first conference of Andy Burnham's premiership, and there was real enthusiasm for being in a government setting out a plan both principled and pragmatic to take on difficult stuff.  

Who sets the guardrails 

As co-chair of a global working group on food security, I wanted to know how the government intends to use the UK's G20 presidency in 2027. The Prime Minister's answer was AI. Borrowing Gordon Brown's ambition for Britain as the world's “innovation nation”, he talked about a new global code that captures benefits while staying clear-eyed about risks. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband described a world order in need of rebuilding, with new threats running from the climate crisis to AI, and a Labour Party that is not in the business of accepting the status quo, at home or abroad. One encouraging theme started to emerge: we cannot rely on corporations to set their own guardrails. If the UK wants to use its presidency to show it can convene the world around hard, shared risks, then food security - exposed to the same climate shocks, conflicts and concentrations of market power - must sit alongside AI on that agenda.

Transitions, plural 

DESNZ SoS Miatta Fahnbulleh framed the climate transition through the cost of living: energy as an everyday essential, and this summer as the moment climate change stopped being a warning about the future. Her account of the hottest summer on record included "green fields scorched brown". Farmers will not need reminding.  The parallels are obvious for another critical transition essential to tackling the climate crisis: food and farming. The same questions arise. Who bears the costs? Who gets a say? How do you bring communities with you? The case for a food transition can be made on the same grounds of justice, affordability and resilience.  

The essentials - minus one 

The Prime Minister's theory of growth is clear: retake control of the essentials that make a place work, devolve power to places, and let business grow on the foundations of a solid real economy. He named the essentials broken up and sold off since the 1980s - homes, water, energy, transport, care - and announced action on each. Food was not on the Prime Minister's list, but it was on Angela Eagle's. When essential services were privatised, she said, "private providers shaped services in their interests not in ours". Her answer is to focus "on the interests of people and not providers". Her diagnosis of water applies almost word for word to a food system in which a handful of firms shape what is grown, developed, advertised, sold and eaten, in their interests rather than ours. 

Devolution getting real 

The Prime Minister's speech spelled out what a new localism means. Angela Eagle built on it: her stated purpose is "putting communities back in control". Her announcement of Good Food Neighbourhoods is welcome - £10 million for an initial 45 communities with the highest levels of food inequality, bringing fresh, affordable produce into neighbourhoods, creating community kitchens and supporting pensioners' lunch clubs that tackle loneliness and hunger together.  As she put it: "this is about more than what's on someone's plate. It's about the ties that bind us together." And of course, we’re delighted to see that our Citizens Advisory Council played a part in crafting this initiative. Joining Mayors at the Great North reception, they are clearly up for it. 

Farming, nature and the jobs for the future we need 

Announcing a £65 million emergency package and planning changes to let farmers build on-farm reservoirs she conceded: "I know this isn't enough."  Nature and farming, she said, are not competing issues to be traded off against each other but "two sides of the same coin”. 

The £79 million package for nature was the speech's most concrete answer to the hot dry summer. Where nature had been allowed to flourish, she said, "the ground held more water and the droughts were less severe"; where trees had been planted, streets were cooler, and flood risk fell. That is the argument for the land use framework’s principle of multifunctional land use right there. And it sits naturally alongside the Prime Minister's concern for the almost one million young people not working or learning, with his promise of work placements and apprenticeships for every young person. Here's one we made earlier. The Nature Service in Wales, building pathways into volunteering and good work in nature for exactly these young people, with the kind of work we - and they - need for long term resilience and adaptation.  

Food matters 

The Right to Food Commission published its report, with 16 recommendations rooted in well-established, globally accepted evidence. As we see in our own work with citizens, these policies have high voter appeal right across the country. So why is it proving so hard to turn ministerial attention to the policies that would deliver them? 

The food economy runs through this conference's biggest announcements - and yet was barely mentioned. The answer might lie here. On its stand, the Food and Drink Federation declares that food contributes £42bn to the British economy. But set that against Tim Jackson's calculation in our updated False Economy of Big Food report, the real cost to our economy of diet related ill-health is a whopping £298bn. The shape of the problem becomes clear. The Prime Minister's National Care Service, a reform on the scale of the NHS itself, will be caring for people who are living longer in poorer health, much of it diet-related. 

Which brings me to the one jarring note in the Prime Minister's otherwise accomplished, content-rich and emotionally engaged speech. Making the case for tougher action on rogue landlords, he reached for food as the precedent: "We don't let people sell food which damages health." The argument on housing was right. The analogy was not. We do: and worse we've given the firms that do it the most seats at the policy table. I'm pleased that Angela Eagle seems alert to this conflict of interests. "We aren't making... changes because we like meddling with how markets work. We are making... changes because we know the damage done when they don't." 

It's global and local  

Everyone everywhere has a stake in food. It is foundational to every aspect of our lives. The fact that our global and local food economies are both damaging the planet and its ecosystems, and the people in it, and increasingly precarious and vulnerable to global shocks, should put it front and centre of the whole cabinet. A fairer, greener, healthier and more resilient food economy is central to the things this government most wants - a transformed economy, responsible leadership on the global stage, growing national prosperity and thriving communities, for now and for generations to come.