While the fuel bills are taking the headlines, the 20 year high in food bills and food poverty requires immediate action, argues the Green Party’s Ken Huggins.

Energy prices have risen dramatically recently, but food prices have also been rising and are now at a 20-year high. As with energy costs, this disproportionately affects the households whose income falls below their needs.
For us here in the sixth richest nation in the world it is a national disgrace that food poverty means there are over 2,600 food banks operating across the UK, with almost six million adults and two million children struggling to get enough to eat.
This is why the Green Party is calling for a Universal Basic Income, so that citizens have a guaranteed income to support their essential needs. The relentless rise in the use of food banks in the UK began long
before the Covid pandemic. It is 22 years since the Russell Trust opened its first food bank in their home town of Salisbury, and it now supports over 1200 food banks across the UK. In North Dorset we have food banks in Sherborne and Blandford and the Vale Pantry community food store in Sturminster Newton. No
doubt there are others.
While energy is essential for our society, food is essential for our survival. For good health we need good food, and we need to grow more of it ourselves. Here in the UK we rely on imports for a staggering 45% of
our food overall, including 84% of our fruit. This means we are extremely vulnerable to external events such as climate change and conflict. Food produced sustainably and consumed locally helps protect us from global shocks.
So we have to change what we eat, what we grow, how we grow it … and reduce the appalling wastage. One-third of food production is never eaten! Farmers are THE key workers, and we must support them to
transition to more sustainable agriculture.

Many in business could learn from the ‘can do’ attitude of the British public and do better, argues Lib Dems’ Mike Chapman.

Against a backdrop of some glorious Dorset spring weather, the gold of daffodils along verges, the beginnings of blossom and the return of the dawn chorus, we have had some grim stories with which to come to terms. The line on Ukraine that struck me most forcefully came in a conversation with a
now very elderly soldier. Echoing Kennedy, he said “Ich bin ein Kyiver”. It is so much to be hoped that the active diplomatic, financial, humanitarian and material support being given to which those words allude will
help enable democratic values to prevail.
Some of that high ground was lost, though, with the shocking announcement of the mass redundancy at P&O. Thoughts are with those who have lost a livelihood – but also with the agency staff who will do a tough
and responsible job on much poorer terms. The phalanx of security men escorting employees from the ships was a sorry sight. They might as well have had a Z on their uniforms for all the moral authority they conveyed. There hasn’t been such instant damage to a well- known brand since the infamous comments of Gerald Ratner!
Since we are comparing and contrasting … as a people we seem to embrace the need for a ‘Can Do’ attitude. We are seeing it in the heart-warming stories of the support being mustered for the Ukranian refugees across the nation. We saw it in the Covid vaccination programme and annually in the response to
Children In Need. The contrast is with the inertia of government (and its centralisation and secrecy), with the stories coming out of the DVLA about a culture that seems to be at odds with the ethos of public service, and with the light now being thrown on the prosecution, nay, persecution of so many postmasters and postmistresses. A dishonourable mention must also go to high-rise cladding businesses, profiteering
energy companies and sewage- discharging water companies.
We need to seize the day, hang on to the ‘Can Do’ and turn it into ‘Can Do Better’.

It is the power imbalance which allows giant brands to mistreat their staff, says Labour’s Pat Osborne.

P&O Ferries sacked 800 staff without notice by video this month, replacing them with agency workers on worse pay and conditions.
As a subsidiary of Dubai-based DP World, a firm owned by the Dubai royal family, P&O aren’t exactly
short of a bob or two.
In fact, over the last two years DP World has paid out more than $376 million in dividends to their
royal shareholders, at the same time as reportedly receiving more than £30 million in emergency
funding from the UK government (including benefitting from the taxpayer funded furlough scheme) while sitting on the kind of bank balance that has Scrooge McDuck reaching for his swimming trunks.
P&O aren’t alone in engineering a deliberate race to the bottom for pay and conditions. Household
names like British Gas, BA, Weetabix, TESCO, ASDA and Clarks have all used ‘fire and rehire’ tactics to bully and intimidate their staff into accepting cuts to pay and conditions in recent times. It seems that the Tories
have created an environment where bad bosses think they have license to tear up staff contracts, leaving many working people leaning into the cost-of-living crisis feeling more insecure about their jobs and income than at any time since WWII.
We need to reverse this race to the bottom for pay and conditions by ending the power imbalance that allows bad employers to treat their staff in this way. That’s why Labour’s ‘New Deal for Working People’ and Keir Starmer’s promise that a Labour government will write it into law within 100 days of taking office
are so important. Under Labour, work will be more secure and better-paid because unions and individuals will be given stronger rights to redress power imbalances in the workplace.

As we watch the atrocities being committed in Ukraine, Simon Hoare MP praises the communities who have risen up in swift action to provide help – and urges us all to continue to ‘do our bit’ where we can.

While Spring creeps into life the situation in and around Ukraine resembles deepest winter. Our Ukrainian brothers and sisters are living through the hell of war, amid scenes and images which we had all hoped were
consigned to the European history books.

The best of us
While Russia is showing us the worst of mankind, and of man’s inhumanity to man, across North Dorset we are seeing the best.
Our DNA-embedded spirit of wanting to do all we can to help has risen to the fore. I cannot tell you how genuinely moved and inspired I was by the veritable army of volunteers I was privileged to go and help (albeit for a few hours) at The Exchange at Sturminster, and to see similar hives of activity at Shaftesbury’s Guildhall and Blandford’s Ginger Viking.
A continuous stream of members of the public, motivated not by instruction but by a spontaneous desire to ‘do something’, bringing literally tonnes of food, clothing, blankets, toiletries and toys. Some came with a
car full, others a carrier bag; it was clear that all were doing everything they could to help. Then there were the rooms of people sorting, packing and boxing up.
Still others in a human crocodile loading vans for dispatch to Southampton and the port. Each and every one is a hero. They were and are the best of us.

A magnificent spirit
Local businesses too have been marvellous. I don’t know all of those who helped but a shout out to Dikes of Stalbridge, Johnsons of Gillingham, Virginia Heywood at Shaftesbury and Gillingham’s South West Packing for either donating goods or that elusive and much-needed commodity, the cardboard box.
Thank you too to Dorset Council for allowing the use of the chapel at St Mary’s School for storage purposes, and of course thank you to Ginger Viking and the Exchange for allowing their premises to be used as donation hubs. You’ve all been magnificent.

So – what can be done now?
As your MP I continue to press Ministers to be swift and flexible with the refugee resettlement process, and
for the Home Office to be far more fleet of foot than it has demonstrated hitherto. We are dealing with a wartime situation and our processes and policies, designed for peacetime, need to reflect that dynamic shift. Whatever can be afforded – be it £1 or £100 – I would urge you to make a donation to the DEC
fund www.dec.org.uk.

Can you offer housing?
Also, please consider registering on this website for the housing scheme www.homesforukraine.campaign. gov.uk.
You might have a spare room, granny flat or a holiday-let. Please do register your interest on this site. If we can do our bit then we should. If we all try to ask ourselves the question ‘if we were in their position, what would we want others to do for us?’ I don’t think we will go far wrong.

by Simon Hoare MP