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Tackling poverty means the right to food for all

SEPTEMBER 26, 2025

By Sarah Woolley

The scale of food insecurity in Britain today is shocking. Over 7 million adults are going hungry or skipping meals, and children, disabled people and single-parent families are hit hardest. This isn’t just about poverty: it is about health inequality, life expectancy and whether people can live with dignity.

The context to this is that over one year into the Labour Government, it is clear that austerity didn’t end with the Tories being voted out. Working people are still paying the price. Food prices are still sky high. Wages are still far too low. Homes are still cold and damp. Public services are still being cut back to the bone – there was an announcement only a couple of weeks ago about further cuts to firefighter jobs. And it is disabled people, low-paid workers and young people who are feeling it the hardest.

When it comes to food insecurity specifically, the much-vaunted NHS Ten-Year Plan talks about prevention and population health. But prevention has to mean tackling the root causes of poor nutrition: poverty pay, insecure work and lack of access to affordable, healthy food. If we don’t get that right, then all the talk about prevention will ring hollow.

That is why the BFAWU (the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union) has campaigned so strongly for a Right to Food to be enshrined in law. We know from our members that the crisis in access to decent food is not about supply, it is about inequality. We also helped establish the Food and Work Network, bringing together academics, campaigners, unions and community groups to connect the dots between work, wages and nutrition. The evidence is clear: good jobs, fair pay and strong food access schemes are inseparable from good health.

Schemes like Healthy Start are lifelines. But they are underfunded, poorly promoted and far too limited. We need government investment to expand these programmes, and we need local, community-led food initiatives to be supported, not left to rely on voluntary goodwill. And we need a properly resourced workforce – including dietitians – to bring expertise into communities where health inequalities are at their starkest.

This is not just a public health issue – it is a question of justice. No one in one of the richest countries in the world should be forced to choose between heating and eating. No parent should have to skip meals so their children can eat. And no worker should be producing food they themselves cannot afford to put on their own table, as so many of our BFAWU members do.

Alongside this, in the food sector, we’re also demanding action on food security and sustainability. Workers shouldn’t be asked to churn out cheap, unhealthy products for poverty wages while supermarkets rake in profits. A just transition in food means decent pay and conditions for food workers, public ownership of key supply chains, and investment in local, sustainable production that puts communities before corporate greed.

Not only would such policies dramatically and immediately improve the lives of millions, but they would point towards a different kind of economy, a restructured economy based on investment and an end to austerity for good.

As part of our campaigning for that better society, we will strongly make the demand for prevention that goes beyond rhetoric – prevention that starts with the Right to Food, delivered through fair pay, decent work, and universal access to nutritious food, as part of building a different kind of economy, for the many not the few.

As Labour meets for its Conference this week, as the Party in government, the time for excuses is over. Working-class people have waited long enough. Now it’s time to deliver.

Sarah Woolley is BFAWU General Secretary.

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