The Good Food Bill: Fixing food for good

The UK has lived through two major food price shocks in recent years, driven by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine... now a third shock is unfolding, with conflict in West Asia driving fresh price rises. Families are being priced out of a healthy diet, farmers' businesses are threatened, and the NHS is being left to pick up the cost of worsening health.

This briefing from Sustain, The Food Foundation and Green Alliance sets out why we need a Good Food Bill. It would create a statutory framework to make our food supply more resilient to future shocks, and to make affordable, healthy food the default choice for everyone.

Successive governments have produced food strategies that fade with each change in political priorities. A Good Food Bill would give these commitments legal force. It would set binding targets to reduce childhood obesity, grow the share of fruit and vegetables produced in Britain, and cut household food insecurity. It would place a duty on Ministers to consider food across all relevant decisions, require five-yearly action plans and local food plans, and establish independent oversight to hold every future government to account.

As the briefing shows, this is not a radical proposition. It simply asks the Government to mean what it says, to plan for the long term, and to be held accountable when it falls short. The next food shock is coming. The choice is whether we prepare for it, or repeat the failures of the past.