21/01/25. Pat Caplan
The Right to Food – what does this mean?
The north London Borough of Barnet is usually thought of as relatively affluent – ‘leafy’ is a common description – yet it has 22 food banks and a significant proportion of its population which is food insecure.
At a recent Food Emergency Summit organised by the Barnet Food Partnership, one proposed solution for food insecurity in the London Borough of Barnet was to encourage Barnet to become a Right to Food Borough. This sounds like a good idea, as if the Council would be seen to be prioritising the issue of food insecurity. But let’s unpack this a bit.
The UK signed up to the UN Convention on Human Rights in 1948 which includes the following:
Article 25 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
The later International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 reiterates and expands on this right, particularly in Article 11.
However, the UK has not incorporated any of this international law into its own legal system which means that the rights mentioned in these covenants cannot be brought to court, as they are not justiciable.
This is a situation which contrasts sharply with other nation states where the courts can seek to enforce the right to food. India is a good example and has its own laws in the form of The National Food Security Act (NFSA) of 2013, also known as the Right to Food Act, which aims to provide affordable food to the people of India. The state fulfils this law through a public food distribution system (PDS) which provides 5 kg per month of subsidized food grains to eligible households, embracing 75% of rural and 50% of urban populations. Further, the Supreme Court of India has enforced such rights, observing in 2004:
Nonetheless, UK citizens are not without legal means to challenge the lack of right under the Equality Act 2010, as the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) points out frequently e.g. in a blog on its ‘cash first’ approach to food insecurity.
The bearer of rights is the citizen, and rights are conferred by the state, whether at local or national level. So can a Local Authority confer the right to food on its residents? In legal terms, this is largely a symbolic gesture, as cases cannot go to court. But it is indicative of aims and targets, so it may be worth having.
Demands for the Right to Food are part of a political struggle which is local in many areas e.g. London and national and international, such as the World Food Programme and the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation).
Some London boroughs have already declared themselves as supporting the right to food e.g. Barnet’s neighbour Brent and Hackney.
Major cities in the UK have similarly declared themselves as having the Right to Food, the first being Liverpool and others have followed e.g. Coventry while Birmingham signed the Milan Global Cities pledge on food justice.
Some areas of the UK have proclaimed that they are’ Marmot cities or boroughs. These include Leeds, Luton, Coventry, Greater Manchester and Liverpool. The Marmot approach is based on the 2010 Report Fair Society, Healthy Lives published by the Review Team led by Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London and Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity .
The most important principles identified by Michael Marmot are early years development, employment, living standards, communities, ill-health prevention, discrimination, and environmental sustainability. These situate food as foundational to many other aspects of society’s wellbeing.
In their comprehensiveness, the Marmot principles bear comparison with the Welsh 2015 Wellbeing of Future Generations Act which seeks to ensure that future generations are at least as well off as their parents. This means that all aspects of government, national and local, have to take the Act into account in their policies and planning.
There is no point in using this as a token gesture. On the contrary, there needs to be regular monitoring that the ramifications and consequences of the right to food are being observed. For example, Hackney, which passed the Right to Food in January 2023 , has recently asked two councillors to report to the full Council on what has been achieved, while the Council itself has invested money in the ‘food in education’ programme.
In short, then, there are various ways in which local authorities can seek to find ways not only of prioritising food security but of signalling their intent to take this matter seriously and embed it in all of their planning.