Food Policy and the Right to Food in the UK: Coronavirus and Beyond

The right to food is an underexplored area of human rights law, especially in developed countries. The UK has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which contains the right to food in Article 11. The UK has rising levels of food insecurity and people skipping meals due to the cost-of-living crisis and cuts in welfare spending. The COVID-19 pandemic also highlighted failings of the food system, such as high levels of obesity and the reliance on supermarkets and just-in-time supply chains to ensure people could access food. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent war in Ukraine has highlighted the failure of the world to learn lessons from the 2007-8 global food crisis. These failings indicate the UK might be violating some of the obligations it has accepted in relation to the right to food by ratifying the ICESCR. This then raises the issue of what the UK’s obligations are in relation to the right to food. In response to the ongoing uncertainty with regards to the legal obligations arising from the right to food, this thesis develops a novel normative framework for the right to food, focusing on the obligations of developed states. The thesis then applies this framework to UK food policy, arguing for the need for framework legislation to facilitate full realisation of the right to food. Supermarkets and their role in the realisation of the right to food is highlighted as another area in need of regulation by the UK Government. The thesis also highlights the need for measures to ensure food safety and to tackle antimicrobial resistance to be embedded in post-Brexit law and trade policy.