Government reshuffle: What the new team means for food, farming and health

Andy Burnham enters Downing Street with a distinctive record on food, health and living standards, while the reshuffle brings ministers with direct experience of food security, school food and public health. We examine what their priorities and track records could mean for the future of food, farming and health policy.

The Burnham backstory 

Andy Burnham has arrived in Downing Street with a longer track record on food than most recent Prime Ministers. His interest has come through health, poverty, public services, and living standards rather than through farming itself, but it is there, and it is consistent.

Across his time as Health Secretary, Mayor of Greater Manchester, and now Prime Minister, there is a set of recurrent themes that are key to the work of Sustain and our members: prevention of ill health, food security, the role of public procurement, and the role of government in guaranteeing the essentials of life.

One of his sharpest observations came in an interview for the Nourishing Britain report, where he argued that food policy in the UK "is not a coherent whole" – pointing to how responsibility for food policy is scattered across multiple government departments, with no single framework holding it together.

This wording closely reflects Sustain's longstanding call for a joined-up approach to food policy. If the Government is serious about prevention, food security, and healthier communities, it will need a framework that aligns health, farming, environment, education and local government policy. A Good Food Bill remains the clearest route to achieving that.

A health perspective on food

Burnham is the first person to have held the health brief before reaching Downing Street since Neville Chamberlain, having been Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010. His short tenure is not known for any significant advances in food policy, and, like all recent Health Secretaries, his time in the role was dominated by the day-to-day pressures of the NHS. However, he has consistently linked diet to wider questions of health, inequality and demand on public services.

In his Nourishing Britain interview, he named the rising rates of obesity in the population as "a huge issue", while stressing that food insecurity and irregular eating carry a heavy toll on mental as well as physical health.

Burnham’s oft-briefed desire for government and public services to have a greater focus on prevention is nothing new to those working in public health. Whether his Government can deliver on this agenda where others have not remains to be seen.

Greater Manchester and the Right to Food

More recently, Burnham has had direct engagement with food policy as Mayor of Greater Manchester. During and after the Covid-19 pandemic he associated himself with efforts to tackle food insecurity and child hunger, and under his leadership Greater Manchester became the first Combined Authority in England to endorse the principle of a Right to Food.

His consistent argument before reaching Downing Street has been that food security should not rest on individual responsibility alone, and that national and local government have a duty to ensure people can reliably access enough good food.

As Mayor, Andy Burnham set up a Green Spaces Fund in 2021, and later championed the establishment of the Greater Manchester Green & Blue Spaces Action Network (GBSAN), a collaborative regional initiative established to connect residents, voluntary groups, and environmental organisations to improve access to food growing and nature access across the city region. GBSAN operates as part of the broader GM Networks Connect movement, which also includes the Food Security Action Network, linking community action across social, health, environmental and climate justice themes.

This presents an opportunity for the Government to move beyond crisis responses to food insecurity, ensuring everyone can access healthy, sustainable, food with dignity.

Food as part of the essentials of life

A central theme of Burnham's bid for the premiership has been what he calls the essentials of life. Much of that debate has focused on housing, energy, water, and transport. Of course, these services functioning well are all essential to a functioning food and farming system, although he has not yet included food as an industry/service that also warrants greater “public control”. 
For Sustain and our members, food should sit alongside housing, energy and water as one of the essentials of life. Access to healthy, affordable and sustainably produced food underpins public health, economic resilience and community wellbeing. If the new Government is serious about guaranteeing life's essentials, there is a strong case for placing food more firmly at the heart of that agenda.

Public procurement and British food

One of his clearer recent interventions has been on public procurement. Shortly before becoming Prime Minister, he told Labour MPs that the buying power of schools, hospitals, and prisons should be used to support British farmers and producers, strengthening domestic production and local economies. This builds on Labour's manifesto commitment to ensure half of all food bought by the public sector is local or produced to higher environmental standards, a pledge that has since had little public airing.

We strongly welcome this recognition of procurement as a powerful policy lever. The next step is delivery: using public buying standards to support local farmers and growers, local supply chains, higher environmental standards and healthier diets across schools, hospitals and other public institutions.

Food security and national resilience

Burnham's strongest statement to date came during his leadership campaign in June 2026:

“We need to safeguard sovereign manufacturing and production capability across the country in critical sectors like steel, defence, energy, food, and farming – rather than just being prepared to let it just go as we have sadly done in the past.”

That framing treats food not only as a matter of health or affordability, but as one of economic resilience and national security.
There is far less evidence of sustained engagement with agroecology, nature-friendly farming, environmental land management, or farm support schemes. That reflects a politician whose base is urban: a former big-city mayor now representing Makerfield, a predominantly urban and suburban seat.

This is a gap Sustain and our members will want to help fill. As the Government develops its food, farming, and environmental agenda, we will be making the case that agroecological farming, nature-friendly food production and support for fruit and vegetable growers must play a central role in delivering food security, climate resilience, and public health.

New ministers, new opportunities: what the reshuffle means for food, farming and health

The Prime Minister's reshuffle has moved several familiar figures into roles that matter for food, farming, and public health. For the Sustain alliance, this is about more than personalities: these are the people who will shape policy on food security, farming, healthy diets, and prevention in the years ahead, and several of them arrive with directly relevant experience.

Angela Eagle takes charge at Defra

Dame Angela Eagle is the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, appointed on 20 July and succeeding Emma Reynolds, who has moved to the Treasury.

Her return brings welcome continuity. Eagle served as Defra's Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs from September 2025 to June 2026 before a brief spell as Security Minister, so she already understands the brief and the pressures on the sector at a time of climate change, geopolitical instability and rising food insecurity. That experience will be valuable.

Her interests also extend beyond production. She has a long-standing focus on inequalities and a clear grasp of the links between food, public health, and farming, which is exactly the breadth Defra needs if it is to help everyone in the UK access a healthy, sustainable diet.

Sustain has built constructive relationships with Eagle before. We met her shortly before she left Defra earlier this year through the Food Strategy Alliances, and she engaged with a previous parliamentary event on the Good Food Bill. Dame Angela is now the Secretary of State who could carry the Bill forward, if she so chooses. We look forward to continuing those conversations.

Stephen Morgan stays with food and farming

Stephen Morgan remains the food and farming minister, though at the more junior rank of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State rather than Minister of State, a change that reflects Emma Hardy's promotion within the department. Defra has confirmed his portfolio still covers farming and food, as well as marine and fisheries.

As MP for Portsmouth South, Morgan represents a wholly urban seat, and he arrives with little history on farming policy. His record points instead to a strong interest in food and children. Before Defra he was Early Education Minister at the Department for Education, with responsibility for school food. His time at education saw the rollout of free breakfast clubs and the expansion of free school meals to children in households in receipt of Universal Credit. He also initiated the long-awaited and badly needed review of the School Food Standards which is now under way.

That matters, because food policy cannot be separated from health, education and inequality. His portfolio also includes the Food Strategy, which has undoubtedly gone quiet in the last year, alongside the Horticulture and Poultry Growth Strategies.

A refreshed Defra team

Emma Hardy has been promoted to Minister of State, having been at Defra since 2024 with responsibility for water and flooding. Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, MP for Suffolk Coastal, joins as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary covering rural affairs and nature, replacing Mary Creagh, the first Nature minister, who leaves government. Riddell-Carpenter previously chaired the Labour Rural Research Group and holds the rural seat of Suffolk Coastal, adding a rural Labour voice inside the department that could prove significant. Baroness Hayman continues as the Defra minister in the Lords.

Yvette Cooper takes charge at Health

One of the most significant appointments for our work is Yvette Cooper's move to become Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. She arrives from the Foreign Office, having also served as Home Secretary, and replaces James Murray, who held the role for around two months following Wes Streeting's resignation.

A senior and influential figure, Cooper brings considerable political weight. She also has a connection to public health that goes back to her time as a health minister under Tony Blair, when she held the public health brief.

Cooper now inherits the 10-Year Health Plan and the task of turning the language of prevention into practical policy. Governments of every stripe say they want to prevent illness rather than simply treat it.

The test is whether prevention survives the difficult spending decisions to come. There are early opportunities to act, from strengthening the Healthy Start scheme for families on low incomes to bringing forward legislation on energy drinks for under-16s.

A new voice on public health

Dame Diana Johnson has been appointed the Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety – a role which replaces the previous Minister for Public Health and Prevention. This is a key role for Sustain and our members, with responsibility for food-related ill health, Healthy Start, the Healthy Food Standard and the forthcoming legislation on the ban of the sale of energy drinks to those under 16.

Dame Diana previously served as Schools Minister in the final years of the Brown Government, overseeing pilots of universal free school meals in areas including Durham and Newham. More recently, as Minister for Employment at the Department for Work and Pensions, she led the introduction of the Crisis and Resilience Fund, widely applauded by charities for its co-designed guidance, multi-year funding, and shift away from the short-term Household Support Fund model. Sustain has long championed dignified, cash-first responses to financial hardship and the importance of wraparound support, including through our co-authored statement on Dignified Access to Food.

Dame Diana has big shoes to fill following Sharon Hodgson, who was a strong voice for improvements to dietary health and an opponent of the widespread industry lobbying to delay and dilute proposed regulations. We hope it’s a fight she will continue.

Turning ministerial change into progress

Personnel changes alone will not deliver healthier diets, food security or a thriving farming sector. The real test will be whether ministers use this opportunity to advance practical reforms, from a strengthened Food Strategy and support for sustainable farming to action on dietary health and a Good Food Bill.

Sustain and our members stand ready to work with ministers across Whitehall to help deliver a food system that supports people, producers and the planet.