Let the Farmers Eat Cake

Starmer, in an attempt to appease the angry farmers, has created a Marie Antoinette moment by allowing the farmers to share some of his cake.

In 2010, the government spent about £2.4 billion on food and catering services and it is believed to be £5Bn spend in 2025.  He has promised that UK farmers will get £2.5Bn of that £5Bn spend.

In Q3 2024 there were 106,900 farmers in the UK (a fall of 1,400 since Q2 2024).  

Assuming there are still 106,900 farmers in the UK he is offering to give £23,386 of food business to every farmer. Sounds reasonable although certainly not the millions he will take off them in inheritance tax. Doubtless farmers will be taxed on this extra income....

I think the bigger question is whether £5Bn spend by the government on food is excessive?  It certainly sounds a lot.

Schools account for 29%

Further and higher education is 29%

Hospitals and care homes is 25%

Armed forces is 11%

Prisons is 5%

Government offices is 1%So let's look at the numbers:

There are 2.1 million children eligible for free school dinners and 195 days in a school year so the cost of each meal is £4 - seems reasonable.  Other children have to pay for school dinners so I dont think they should be included in this £5Bn spend.

I am unclear what the £1.45Bn spend is for higher education. Students between ages of 16 and 19 might be entitled to free meals but it's unlikely to the same number.  Who is the tax payer actually feeding here?

The NHS serves 140 million meals per year.  So that equates to £9 per meal. I guess still an acceptable number but a lot more than school dinners. 

For our armed forces, ESS catering supplied 16.5 Million meals and Sodexo served 7 million meals. A total of 23.5 million meals at a cost £550 Million so that's £18 per meal.  OK that's starting to sound a lot.  OK an army goes to war on it's stomach but an £18 breakfast is starting to sound expensive.  HMRC provides a tax allowance to business of £5 for breakfast, £5 for lunch and £15 for dinner (£25 per day whereas the armed forces is £18 per meal).

OK let's look at prisoners.  There are 87,726 prisoners in the UK that get 3 meals per day at a cost of £250 million per year. So that's 96 million meals costing on average £2.60 per meal.

OK I dont want criminals having fancy food but full marks to the catering companies managing to feed these prisoners on £2.60 per meal.

Finally we get to government offices.  This can't include local councils (school dinners should also come out of local council spend not central government).  

So who are these central government employees getting £50M of free food?

There are 3.97 Million government employees.  Government employees are expected to work from home 2 days per week. Assuming they work 220 days per year, that means they would be in the office 120 days per year. That would be 476 million meals.   Clearly this £50M is spend is not for the masses of government workers.  It's far more likely it's for the MPs.  They get subsidised meals and I'm sure Starmer and Rachel are always ordering "working lunches".  That's probably where the £50M is going.

Hopefully this is a lifeline to the farmers but there are serious questions on where some of this £5Bn on catering is going.