5. Statement by Peter Fox: Introduction of a Member Proposed Bill: Food (Wales) Bill

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:12 pm on 14 December 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Peter Fox Peter Fox Conservative 4:12, 14 December 2022

Thank you, Jenny, and thank you for your support. Can I thank you for the work that you're doing in this area within the cross-party working group for school meals, and what you are aspiring to see? I've been happy to work with you on there, because we need to alter the nature of the food that our young people are accessing. We need local, sustainable food within our communities. Sadly, we heard, didn’t we, through the cross-party working group, that often procurement contracts are based 70 per cent on cost, 30 per cent on quality. That’s wrong. That’s morally wrong, when we have such high-quality local produce that we could put into our public services, into our schools.

I believe too, as you do, that the commission—or a body similar to it, with expertise from education, from health, from Welsh Government, from producers, from consumers—needs to be together to shape the whole, holistic picture. You can’t have one person who specialises just in agriculture to be able to shape a whole food system. You need somebody with all of those talents, all of that expertise, to come together to create this holistic picture. That’s why I was against one commissioner. I feel that it needs a breadth of expertise. And as I said, the shape of this would sit with the Government—it’s a framework Bill—in how they would put that together, and they could put it together in a way that actually achieves the targets that the Bill is looking at and achieves their own targets. So, I do believe that a commission, or something very similar, has to happen.

I do not believe—and I will reiterate it again—that the future generations commissioner would have the capacity or scope to pick this up. Indeed, the commissioner has been extremely supportive and has recognised our Bill in her recent report. I think that she recognises that there is a huge piece of work here. We've tried to do it in such a way that there is a synergy between how we’ve put this together and all the other policies in the framework that currently exists.