More than 100 organisations across business, investment, civil society, academia and the health sector have written to Andy Burnham to call for a Good Food Bill to improve national food security and public health.

The letter lays out three overlapping challenges facing the UK:

• a food supply exposed to increasingly frequent environmental and geopolitical shocks
• food prices rising much quicker than people’s incomes
• food-related ill health that worsens year on year

The letter says a Good Food Bill would:

• Set legally binding targets to reduce childhood obesity, increase the consumption of fruit and vegetables and the proportion grown in Britain, and reduce household food insecurity;
• Require the Government to publish a Reference Diet, so that policy across departments works towards the same goals;
• Place a duty on Ministers to consider food in decisions across health, education, farming, planning, environment and trade;
• Require five-year Good Food Action Plans setting out how the targets will be met;
• Empower local leaders to have regard to food across their work to support local economies and reduce inequalities;
• Establish independent oversight to report annual progress publicly, so that commitments cannot be quietly dropped when priorities change