Dundee City Council calls for Right to Food in Scots Law and Abolition of Food Banks

I moved an amendment at a Dundee City Council committee meeting which committed Dundee City Council to support the Right to Food being enshrined in Scots Law and to support legislation being brought forward by Rhoda Grant MSP on this.  The council also supported plans to end the use of food banks in Scotland.  I think that it is shameful that people are struggling to feed their families in Dundee in 2022.

I want to be very clear that I value the work of everyone in our city who has supported a Food Bank or worked or volunteered in a food bank.  These people have made our city and our country a better place and we should be extremely grateful to them.   However, we should also recognise that people going hungry in Dundee in 2022, people not having enough to feed their families in Dundee in 2022 and people using food banks in Dundee in 2022 is a disgrace.  We should all be working for the eradication of food banks in our city and our country. 

 

The amendment which I put forward calls for support for the Right to Food in Scots Law.  We have a theoretical right to food under international law, but this clearly isn’t working or there would be no need for food banks. 

 

This proposal recognises that the Second UN Sustainable Development Goal is End Hunger by 2030.  When we hear about Sustainable Development Goals, we might think of the work of SCIAF, or Oxfam or Christian Aid but this applies to Dundee as much as the developing world.   That we need to think about eradicating hunger in the 2022 in Dundee is a disgrace.

The Bill proposed by Rhoda Grant MSP is intended to work with other measures being brought forward, for example the Good Food Nation agenda.  It is right for the Scottish Government to highlight the economic importance of things like the export of whisky or the production of smoked salmon, but we also need to recognise that it is appalling to talk about expensive exports at a time when people can’t feed their families.

Attempts have been made to block the progress of Rhoda Grant's proposed Bill in the Scottish Parliament.   Given the unanimous support from the council for it I hope that all local MSPs will support this Bill and help to make it law.  It would allow all levels of Government to make sure that their work ensured that people would have the right to food.