Budget wise: Sustain publishes recommendations for Government ahead of the Spending Review

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver her first Budget Wednesday 30 October. Her speech will outline the Government's plans for raising or lowering taxes. It also includes big decisions about spending on health, schools, police and other public services.

Sustain has submitted its recommendations to the Treasury, with focus in four main areas: cost of living, health, education, environment and rural affairs.

Cost of living: Sustained support for low-income households

In cost of living and health, our submission includes recommendations to make the household support fund an ongoing fund.

The cycle of short-term extensions since 2021 has created unnecessary uncertainty among councils and other local organisations, with many already withdrawing schemes which help families in need with bills including food and energy, or vital support during school holidays to families with children normally eligible for free school meals. We are calling for the creation of a permanent fund to allow local authorities to continue to support our most vulnerable residents and allow a flexible allocation, including making provision for the use of cash grants, funding for advice services and collaboration with food partnerships, food poverty alliances and voluntary and community sector organisations.

Vulnerable children and families could also be helped by increasing the value of Healthy Start. Sustain analysis estimates that in 2023 families lost out on around £53 million of free fruit, veg and milk, due to low uptake of the scheme. We need better promotion of the progammre; an increase in value in line with inflation; and expansion of th scheme to five-year-olds in order to close the gap between eligibility to Healthy Start (up to age four) and Free School Meals (from age 5), to families on No Recourse To Public Funds and to all families on Universal Credit or equivalent benefits. 

Health: Industry levies to help make food healthier

The Government should also build on the successes of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy and explore other potential financial levers that would incentivise further product reformulation and increase revenues for investment in children’s health. (See the more detailed submission from the Recipe for Change coalition).

Poor population health is increasingly damaging our economy, reducing our participation in the workforce and our productivity, and increasing the need for medical attention, social care and welfare support. For example, the total economic impact of obesity and overweight in the UK is estimated to be £98 billion per year.

Introducing levers to incentivise production of healthier food and drink, including reformulation, is crucial for improving public health. The Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) to date has reduced the sales-weighted average sugar in soft drinks by 46% from 2015-2020, whilst raising £300-350 million every year in revenues for the Exchequer. These revenues have supported investment in child health programmes including the National School Breakfast Programme, supported the Holiday Food and Activities Programme and the doubling of the Primary School Sports & PE Premium. 

Education: Roadmap towards school food for all

In education, we want to see sustainable funding of healthy school food which would see a thriving school catering sector and a longer-term roadmap towards healthy, sustainable school food for all children from nursery to sixth form.

All the evidence shows that providing hot, nutritious lunches for children in school acts as a foundation for good learning, more cohesive and harmonious classrooms, supporting teachers to teach and children to learn and achieve. A healthy school food sector also supports local employment as well as wider food and farming supply chain development.  Read more about the benefits on our Say Yes to School Food for All campaign page.

Environment and rural affairs: Nature-friendly farming locked in, to protect people, animals and planet

In environment and rural affairs, we would like to see the farming budget protected. It must be considered a mission-critical resource for the environment, allocated toward long-term environmental targets to ensure the UK meets its EIP 2023 objectives and ensures long-term food security. Any budget cuts here are a worry as farmers now identify climate change as the biggest threat to UK food security.

We also recommend measures to ensure fairness in the supply chain including the expansion and reform of the Groceries Code Adjudicator; and call for the development of an Horticulture strategy and Lande-Use framework.

We also want to see resource regulators so that river pollution from agriculture can be tackled. In England, intensive agriculture is the main cause of river pollution incidents and is reponsible for more pollution entering rivers than water companies. Our Food for the Planet campaign has identified the ten factory farm corporations producing more toxic excrement than the UK's ten largest cities