A polling station sign. Credit: Lazyllama: Shutterstock
Sustain reflects on the first year of this Labour government and what it means for our work for better food and farming policy.
A polling station sign. Credit: Lazyllama: Shutterstock
At the start of 2024 Sustain set out our priorities for the manifestos of the parties that aspired to take power. It was to be a general election on 4 July 2024 that brought the Labour Party to a landslide victory after 14 years in opposition.
On 5 July 2024 Sir Keir Starmer became Prime Minister and his ministry began. With Labour having pledged to champion British farming, support sustainable food production, and improve land use for nature and climate, and to cultivate the conditions for the healthiest generation of children ever, this first anniversary is a key moment to assess to what extent the reality is matching up to the rhetoric.
Note: The assessment below does not seek to give a fully comprehensive overview of all the movements in the policy and political landscape of the last year in relation to UK food and farming. There are many more areas where Sustain members have been pressing for change.
Kath Dalmeny, Chief Executive of Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming, said:
“One year into a new government, Sustain is heartened by initial steps taken to improve the health profile of food sold in supermarkets and to improve food access for hundreds of thousands of children living in households on a low income, via free school meals and increased value of Healthy Start payments. However, we are worried by government's failure to tackle the undue influence of unhealthy food advertisers in policy processes, with many delays to proper restriction of unhealthy food marketing to children.
In relation to food production, many farmers are understandably angry about the impact of stop-start support for the critically important transition to agroecological farming, which makes business planning in an already precarious sector that much harder. It is also hugely worrying that there has been so little progress on a much-needed horticulture strategy, and on unfair dealing and grossly unfair prices in manufacturing and supermarket supply chains. We do however welcome the government's announcement of a review of farm profitability, renewed £150m funding for environmental measures on farms, and look forward to the Sustainable Farming Initiatives (SFI) being reopened in 2026.
All such action – for health, sustainable farming, climate and nature, must now be prioritised in the national food strategy. In our view, action should also be required by UK law, as it is in Scotland, making national government and local authorities accountable for decisive steps to improve our food system.”
The Government will need to demonstrate momentum with further regular policy announcements so that stakeholders can know the Food Strategy is not a series of piecemeal fixes, but a set of comprehensive policies that will bring about the intended outcomes.
Ownership and leadership from across the Cabinet are needed, not just from Environment Secretary Steve Reed and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. The Prime Minister also needs to be driving progress on such a fundamental agenda, notwithstanding Starmer’s mounting domestic and international priorities.
We are also keen to see proper incorporation of work by local authorities, public health bodies and sustainable food partnerships into the food strategy, giving them proper recognition, status and responsibilities. We have prepared a briefing in collaboration with Sustainable Food Places and submitted this to the Defra Food Strategy team.
What happens next: Beyond what we know about the process to date, an ‘update’, ‘framework’ or ‘action plan’ is to be published ahead of Parliament heading into the summer recess. Defra has promised more information about how the Food Strategy "will move from concept to reality and how this will be done in partnership with everyone who has a stake in it". It is not expected that this will contain further policy announcements.
Most credible commentators are clear that new law and regulation is needed, including framework legislation on food systems. The Government will need to move forward with this before too long, and to do so when its own wider legislative programme for this Parliament is building, and what is already going through Parliament is taking longer than first expected.
Political instability and extreme weather have combined to make farming increasingly difficult. The agriculture sector remains under intense pressure from volatile global markets, rising costs, and growing expectations on climate and nature delivery. Evidence shows the land-use sector is off-track to meet Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) goals, particularly for climate and biodiversity.
The closure and delay of Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes, including the precipitous closure in March 2025 of Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) payments for environmental improvements, has left many farmers in limbo, without access to the funding or advice needed to transition to agroecological forms of farming.
Trust between the government and farming communities- already strained post-Brexit- has been further eroded by tax changes affectiving farmers (Agricultural Property Relief - APR and Business Property Relief - BPR) and poor communication on future support schemes.
Horticulture Strategy: Labour has yet to publish a cross-departmental strategy for boosting domestic fruit and vegetable production. With less than 2% of farmland used for horticulture and the UK heavily reliant on imports from climate-vulnerable countries, this remains a major gap. Sustain and others are calling for a long-term growth strategy for UK horticulture, underpinned by investment to strengthen domestic production and consumption of home-grown fruit, vegetables and pulses.
Procurement: Labour committed in its manifesto to ensuring 50% of food in public procurement is local or sustainable. No standards or delivery plan have yet been published. Strong standards are needed to meet the government’s health, climate and nature targets: legally-binding standards to ensure that public sector food leads a transition to healthy, sustainable diets, reduces our impact on climate and nature and supports agroecological farming. Projects that unlock the supply of organic, UK-sourced vegetables, fruit, pulses and legumes into the public sector, to scale-up initiatives (such as Sustain's own Bridging the Gap pilots) need investment.
Fairness in the Food Supply Chain: Most UK farmers earn less than 1% of the profit from the food they produce. While Labour has emphasised profitability as a key goal, there are no firm proposals yet to better regulate buyer behaviour or ensure farmers receive a fair share of the profits for their produce. A comprehensive and unified regulatory framework to ensure farmers are protected from unfair dealing and are paid a fair price for the food they produce is widely being called for.
Labour has set out an ambitious agenda to reshape farming policy, with early commitments such as the Land Use Framework, the 25-year roadmap, the farm profitability review, and a new Food Strategy marking important first steps. Yet so far, delivery on the ground has lagged far behind this ambition. Over the past year, uncertainty around schemes like the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and delays to the rollout of Environmental Land Management (ELM) have eroded farmer confidence. Changes to agricultural inheritance tax have further distracted from Defra's core goal of delivering a sustainable farming transition post-Brexit.
Defra's renewed focus on farm profitability is a welcome shift - but it must now be matched with tangible policy action. Labour’s first year has laid useful groundwork, but the next 12 months must be defined by delivery. Without clear progress, the early manifesto promise of a ‘new deal for farmers’ risks falling flat. Turning strategy into action is essential if trust is to be rebuilt and meaningful change achieved on the ground.
The government has not set out in any detail how required changes to farming will be delivered in a just and equitable way, for example, by investing in healthy protein crops like pulses and legumes, and supporting farmers to exit polluting systems like intensive livestock farming. Only the highest tier farm payment schemes offer greenhouse gas emissions reduction potential.
Government investment budgets for climate mitigation are vastly higher for energy and transport transitions than those for agriculture and food.
Food and agricultural products are the single largest source of imported emissions (21%). The government needs to uphold deforestation regulations and hold industries to account for their impacts overseas – especially intensive livestock corporations.
The government is due to release a renewed Environmental Improvement Plan in 2025. For many of the environmental targets that the UK is failing to achieve currently, farming is a key factor in this failure, including reducing nitrate and phosphate pollution, and protecting sites for nature).
The UK High Court has ordered the government to publish a new Carbon Budget Delivery Plan by 29 October 2025.
Children’s food policy has seen a flurry of activity this year - from landmark manifesto pledges and new fiscal commitments to delayed regulations; alongside unanswered questions - leaving a mixed picture of progress, promise, and persistent gaps.
Whilst developments on school food access and standards are welcome, there are funding issues associated with current initiatives, a lack of attention to early years feeding and also to ensuring standards throughout are properly monitored.
The Government is putting a lot of focus on how it is working with food and drink companies, including on delays to marketing regulations, food industry health reporting, and only voluntary guidance on commercial baby food composition and marketing, rather than robust regulations.
The dominant debate about using GLP1 drugs to address overweight and obesity has overshadowed the diverse range of public health and prevention interventions including those designed to increase access to healthy food and protect children and families from junk food marketing, promotion and misleading health claims.
With the 10-Year Health Plan promising a shift to prevention, we expect to see more actions to be set in detail around diet, early intervention and food system transformation.
Food reformulation and tax: We await the outcome of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy review, with the consultation open until 21 July, and announcement expected as part of the Autumn Budget 2025. We’d like to see signals that the Government will look to expand use of levies beyond soft drinks – either as part of the food strategy, the 10 Year Health Plan or ongoing fiscal and health planning.
Tackling inequalities: Whilst expansion of Free School Meals has been linked to the Government’s Child Poverty strategy, we hope to see further movement on this and to strengthen the Healthy Start programme – auto enrolment for both schemes and possibly some movement on the two-child benefit cap.
Energy drinks: We are still waiting for the proposals to ban sales of energy drinks to under-16s to be published for consultation.
School food quality: The review of School Food Standards should be accompanied by a tighter monitoring and compliance system – several Sustain alliance members are involved advising the government, so watch this space!
Commercial baby and toddler food: Recent research into the nutritional quality, labelling and packaging of a wide range of foods marketed for babies and toddlers has exposed huge gaps in regulations governing the commercial baby and toddler food sector. The Government should implement the recommendations from the Competition and Markets Authority report on formula and follow on milks. We are still awaiting publication of the voluntary guidance on composition, marketing and labelling of commercial baby and toddler foods, but call on the government to beyond voluntary measures.
Labour has set out an ambitious strategy to create the ‘healthiest ever generation of children’ as well as to target child poverty. The announcements on breakfast clubs, school food eligibility and the crisis and resilience fund reflect these priorities.
Health ministers have put significant emphasis on shifting government focus from treatment to prevention, with numerous processes including a review of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, a new cross-government Child Poverty Taskforce, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the 10 Year Health Plan all acting as jigsaw pieces in Government plans, including announcements on breakfast clubs, school food eligibility and the crisis and resilience fund. However, it is far from clear how these pieces will fit together as a coherent strategy for a healthier food system for children.
Industry lobbying against healthy food regulations has also played out during Labour’s first year, leading to further delays and weakening of forthcoming advertising regulations (see below), a lacklustre response to the House of Lords recommendations on food, diet and obesity, and no sign of progress on commercial baby food regulations yet.
While new policies signal ambition to address this, such as proposed retailer, manufacturer and out-of-home reporting and targets for healthy sales, major details remain outstanding, and the expanded use of commercial food taxes and levies must be seen as a complementary measure to accelerate progress. The implementation of the 10-Year Health Plan and the ongoing Food Strategy process will be a crucial test of government intent.
It’s become increasingly clear over the past couple of decades that if we want to champion children’s health, we must restrict unhealthy food advertising. When the Government entered Downing Street in the summer of 2024, they were walking into a legacy of powerful evidence, carefully designed interventions and years of precedent for successful, well implemented advertising policies. Plus these were policies that the British public were not only familiar with, but the vast majority backed – with 8 out of 10 adults supporting unhealthy food advertising restrictions on TV and online.
Those proposals were set to come into force this October, so all the incoming government had to do was hold firm and wave them over the line. There was also expectation for an even brighter horizon for unhealthy food advertising restrictions from a government that made it their mission to make the healthiest generation of children ever. However, as we now know, it did not unfold that way.
Will this Government deliver on unhealthy food advertising restrictions on TV and online by January 2026? This policy has already been delayed by over 3 years. Plus this government had recommitted to the latest timeline only four months before they delayed it again.
The Government is currently passing it through the legislative process to remove brand-only advertising from being in scope, but this process could open opportunities to further weaken the policy beyond its current state.
There will be (yet another!) consultation on this policy – this time on how the legislation should be worded to exempt brand only adverts from the rules.
Will the Government ever get round to addressing all the other unhealthy food advertising which is worsening food related ill health across mediums like outdoor, transport, direct mail and radio?
The elephant in the room here is the tactics used by industry to undermine the policy process every step of the way. It was hoped that the Government’s pledge to create the healthiest generation of children ever would embolden an administration with the necessary courage and determination to defend children’s right to health.
However, in their first year, we’ve seen low ambition from government and susceptibility to falling for industry tactics that put business interests before children’s health. Examples include delaying and diluting the TV and online advertising policy, and (despite so much great precedent and evidence from Sustain-supported local governments advertising restrictions), no government conversation about unhealthy food advertising across outdoor spaces.
The Government has promised a quick turnaround on the latest legislative change to the TV and online advertising restrictions and a January implementation date. The next 6 months will be a litmus test for their willingness to champion children’s health over industry.
Children's Food Campaign: Campaigning for policy changes so that all children can easily eat sustainable and healthy food.
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