MSP accuses SNP of breaking food poverty promise
The SNP has “broken its promise” to tackle food insecurity, according to Labour Highlands and Islands MSP, Rhoda Grant.
The Shetland Foodbank this year distributed almost 140 food parcels on average each month. That figure has tripled since 2018, despite the SNP pledging to make access to food a legal right under Scots Law.
Across Scotland the percentage of adults worried they would run out of food has increased three quarters since 2017.
Ms Grant has been campaigning for almost four years to enshrine the right to food and introduced a bill in February 2024 which she says SNP colleagues have refused to back.
“The SNP has no excuse for opposing my Bill,” said Ms Grant.
“Access to food is a human right and I have been working to enshrine this in Scots law – but the SNP has broken its promise.”
In response the SNP said it was committed to ending food and all other types of poverty across Scotland.
“For a Labour MSP to accuse the SNP of breaking promises is astonishing given their party’s own actions over the past few months,” said SNP member for the Highlands and Islands, Emma Roddick.
“Unlike Labour, we are delivering the real change needed to tackle poverty,” Ms Roddick said, noting her party’s plans to reintroduce winter fuel payments and abolish the two-child cap on benefits in Scotland next year.
A Human Rights Bill, dropped last month from Holyrood’s 2024-25 legislative programme, would also have placed a statutory responsibility on the Scottish government to ensure access to food for Scots.
This year’s SNP manifesto does not mention legislating for a right to food, but does describe an “essentials guarantee” to ensure everyone can afford food, and blames rising prices on Brexit.
Last month Ms Grant took her concerns about food poverty to First Minister’s Questions, where she accused John Swinney of “missing the point”.
