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Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Andrew Jones
Main Page: Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)Department Debates - View all Andrew Jones's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
There are 400,000 people in the UK directly employed in the food and drink sector, which is the one I was working in before I came here. We still import a higher proportion of our food and drink than any other country in the G20, so may I urge the Secretary of State to continue all the focus on redressing that balance and on exports?
Elizabeth Truss
I completely agree with my hon. Friend about that, which is why we are focusing on opening up more markets to British food—the US market is being opened to beef, which is a fantastic opportunity. But we also need to be encouraging more of our young people to look at food, farming and agriculture as a career, because fantastic skilled jobs are available and we need to make the idea of working in food and farming much more mainstream.