A COUNCILLOR and volunteer is leading a campaign for Cumbria to "lead they way" when it comes to tackling food poverty.

Karen Lockney, who is a Cumbria County Councillor and volunteer for Carlisle Community Help, is calling for Carlisle to follow the example of Liverpool in backing the Right to Food campaign.

The drive would make access to food a legal right within Part 2 of the National Food Strategy due to be published later this year. She also wants Cumbria to follow suit.

"In practical terms, this would mean, for example, changes to the benefits system so the waiting time for the first payment of Universal Credit is less, the uplift is not removed, and the system is less punitive overall, covering the cost of living more realistically; feeding children receiving Free School Meals over the holidays; measuring and reporting on levels of food poverty regularly; ensuring policy and practice adhere to principles protecting a right to food and ensuring redress where necessary.

"Food charities working in this field also campaign for sustainable farming and fishing practices and we support this fully. At a local level, practical strategies would come out of a development plan based on what we learnt from communities about what they need and what will work for us all; we do not want to pre-judge what this would be, but a local plan is needed."

As well as backing the campaign, Karen - as part of Carlisle Community Help - also plan for actions to accompany the words.

"We would like to see resources provided for councillors and officers to spend time in communities talking to people about our relationship with food so that we can plan together for action to overcome the challenges through the development of a local food poverty action plan," she said.

"We also think there is the potential in a county like Cumbria where we are so close to aspects of food production, to ensure buying high quality, locally produced food is something that is available to everyone and that local communities benefit directly from the amazing resources we have in this county."

Karen, along with Carlisle Community Help's founder Lisa Brown, hope to present motions to council calling for the county's support for the campaign. They also want to work with local communities to understand the reasons behind food poverty.

When we first started CCH, it was a crisis response to help people put food on the table and get their prescriptions during the first lockdown, but as our work grew to encompass providing school meal parcels during holidays and now running an affordable food hub, we have learned so much more about issues of food insecurity. We began by just trying to help vulnerable and isolated people get food, but now we are questioning why we have food insecurity in 2021 in the 6th richest country in the world, and we want to campaign to tackle this. The media attention given to the likes of Marcus Rashford's campaigns have really brought the issue of food insecurity to the public eye, and we are not alone in questioning what the issues are with food insecurity and food poverty in this day and age.

UN data shows that 8.4 million people in the UK currently struggle to get enough to eat. The Trussell Trust forecast a 61% increase in food parcel need at the end of 2020, and noted that at the start of the pandemic half of the people using a food bank had never used one before - this reflects our own experience at CCH. We have been deeply moved by the individual stories of people we have heard, sometimes these are heart breaking. But we are also angry that people should be struggling like this in a wealthy country in 2021. This is what has led us to look at the underlying causes of food poverty and to join our voices to the many people campaigning for change.

When we have begun to ask why there are issues with food insecurity, we realise there are different reasons, some which people see differently depending on their political outlook, and some which we can probably all agree on. There are many campaign groups nationally, other councils, charities who are thinking about these problems in our society and campaigning for change. We want to use our role as Labour councillors, what we have learned at CCH, and what we have learned from looking at research and reading about this issue to join our voices to the campaign for change and - crucially - to understand what is needed locally, in Carlisle, and Cumbria more widely, to support our communities and make sure no-one is going hungry, and to support people's health and well being in not just eating well, but being able to enjoy food and have choice and dignity in shopping and eating.

It is important to note that we do not want this to be a 'top down' initiative. This is not about some people telling other people how they should eat, shop or cook. We want to work with people, listen to people in our communities, get people talking to each other, to find out more about the root causes of food insecurity, and to listen to what people think is needed to combat the issue, how we can all support each other and what support is needed from local or national government. Only when we know this, will we be able to work alongside people to campaign for the changes and resources that will make a difference in people's daily lives.